About Me

• Freeper officially since 11/22/02, but lurker prior to that.
• 40-something "angry white male" </sarcasm off>
• Registered Nurse since 1989. Q: Are you a MALE nurse? A: (as I pull the front of my pants forward and look down) Yep! (elderly women would commonly ask me if I was a male nurse; I had to fight the urge to reply: "the last time I checked I was")
• Registered Republican, practicing Libertarian
• Husband to Jackie (the best wife a man can ever hope to have)
• Dog lover (we currently have an English Springer Spaniel, GoldenDoodle, and Sheltie
• Hobbies: Computers, news junkie, and amateur genealogist. I'm fortunate, in that many of my ancestors came from Scotland and England, both of which have a decent amount of records available as far back the the 1500's. My Irish research isn't going as well; Ireland's records are not that good.

Blog Chronic Positivity

Organ Donation "Please don't take your organs to heaven; heaven knows we need them here" In August 2005, I was placed on the "list" to receive a kidney transplant. I have Polycystic Kidney Disease, which is a hereditary disease in which the kidneys fill up with cysts. It's autosomal dominant (the adult form), so there is a 50% chance of inheriting it if one of your parents has it, although there can be a mutation, and some people will get it without either of their parents having it. I had an A-V fistula created in August 2005, started hemodialysis in August 2007, and got a kidney transplant May 3, 2008. I've also had several balloon angioplasties (fluoroscopy pics here) to correct narrowings and aneurysms in my fistula. There are many misconceptions about organ donation; if you have any, I'd be happy to discuss these with you; just send me a FReepmail.

Pet Peeve Posting Nazis, whether it be those who criticize for duplicate posts, those who flame when a paragraph isn't formatted, and those who otherwise take it upon themselves to criticize a thread that is posted. This pet peeve extends to ANY thread, not just threads that I have posted. It's the CONTENT that counts; if the formatting isn't to your liking, DON'T READ THE THREAD. If it's a duplicate post: DON'T READ THE THREAD. If the title is copied and pasted from the original, and it's not to your liking, DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER.