RESTRICTED

Outside of the blogiverse, I've spoken a lot about the curse of living with a strict daily limit on my fluid intake, and some have written in for clarification exactly how much I (and late stage kidney failure sufferers/dialysis patients in general) am allowed to consume.

The maximum safe amount I am allowed is a total of 32 ounces of fluid per day, and that amount is what goes up to the Sharpie line drawn on this half-gallon container. 

 

That's a little more than two average-sized glasses of anything potable, but also not very much, so you can see how difficult it is to keep within the prescribed limit. And that limit applies to all fluids. Water, soft drinks, coffee, tea, soup, the water and juices in fruits and berries, you name it. 

 

Before going on dialysis, I regularly downed perhaps 80 ounces of water per day, sometimes more, as I subscribed to the belief that the body needs a lot of water. Well, let me tell you in no uncertain terms that going from being able to guzzle at will to having to make do on barely a sip here and there is torturous. There are days when my body craves nothing more than being able to take a long, slow draw from a big bottle of refrigerated Poland Spring, but every trickle of that blessed H2O gets tallied in my head, so imbibing yields only the most fleeting of genuine enjoyment, even when I am thirsty to the point of near madness. 

 

And because of the restrictions, when I do drink anything, I limit myself mostly to water, with occasional lapses into heavily-diluted punch flavors from the juice aisle at the Associated. Every now and then I will treat myself to a can of soda, but one of those equals around a third of my allowed daily intake, so sodas are a rare indulgence. But that's okay. Since all of this began, I have come to value water like I was a Fremen on Arrakis, and I will happily and eagerly accept water over all other libations.

 

Whenever I get my long-awaited kidney transplant and I heal from the surgery and everything is declared okay, I intend to finally properly slake my thirst with an aforementioned long bottle of Poland Spring that's been refrigerated for at least a couple of days. And it will be glorious.