In 2009 a psychiatrist overprescribed me Seroquel for my PTSD nightmares from growing up in combat as a missionary kid in a war zone overseas.  I collapsed in 2010 from the damage overprescribing me Seroquel did to my kidneys.  I've struggled with Chronic Kidney Disease on top of my chronic PTSD for a decade ever since then.

It wasn't an easy decade.  My college department chair tried to get rid of me for my PTSD every 3 months or so for 10 years by calling me into her office often to suggest I leave and go on disability.  When I passed out while teaching a class from a PTSD panic attack and an ambulance took the to the hospital, my department chair really got active harassing me.  I had to get a lawyer's help to stop her from harassing me like that at work.  

Meanwhile, I got attacked outside of the building at work at the college where I worked 5 times.  3 times my car's tires were slashed in the college parking lot, then acid was poured all over the hood of my car in the parking lot, then when I didn't leave yet a bullet was fired through my car while it sat in my driveway at home.  That kind of gun threat led me to retire early last year and leave the USA for my safety to live where I live now in Mexico away from folks who would attack me for my PTSD like that.  

I'm safe now, but I'm not over what was done to me in the USA that drove me out of the country to live here in Mexico now.  Your support is very welcome. Glad you'll be counseling youths soon.  Feel free to counsel me, too.  It's rough right now in Mexico in the aftermath of that harassment in the USA.  My CKD pain is getting worse and because of my kidney condition I can't even take aspirin for it.  My PTSD's getting worse, too.  I've been grateful for having Prazosin for my PTSD nightmares since it's processed by the liver and not the kidneys.  But it's stopped working as well as it did.  I woke up from terrible nightmares night before last and only slept 3 hours that night.

Dialysis is there still as an alternative.  I had a talk with a friend here in Mexico about it this week.  To my surprise, it turns out he had kidney damage in the past himself and was actually hooked up for dialysis, needle in his arm.  

As with all of my hospital patients I met in the dialysis unit during my ten years as a hospital chaplain, my friend here in Mexico thought better of dialysis once he was hooked up for it.  In his case, he could quit it at that initial stage without as much fatal risk as other patients who'd been doing dialysis for a while.  When those dialysis patients decided to quit it, I was the hospital's officer in charge who had to countersign their Against Medical Advice form to relieve our hospital of legal liability.  To my knowledge, all of those dialysis quitting patients died.  My friend now in Mexico is a new one on me.

I figure I'll tough it out until my next trip to the USA.  That'll be in July 2023 on my 65th birthday when I go back to make sure my state pension paperwork is done.  I'll be eligible for Medicare by then so I can go to my renal specialist at the university med school nearby where I lived for 10 years in the USA.  I had a good experience with them for the 10 years that I struggled to teach college while harassed for PTSD.  

That's where things are re dialysis or not right now, then.  It can change, of course, but it's a plan. Support for sticking to my plan is welcome.