Hurrah! The book is done! I should be so happy now. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. I spent the day at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital for my initial evaluation for a kidney transplant. I didn't sleep much last night. I kept trying to write, kept trying to work, but my mind kept returning to my health. The goddamn gout has come back after a year. My tbig oe hurts like hell. My nose is so stuffed that I'm a bit deaf in the right ear from some sort of sinus infection that has lasted a month. Both conditions are side effects of the immunosuppressants I gobble to squeak a little more life out of my beans.

I realize that my fear of dialysis and transplantation is irrational. People like Alonzo Mourning and Sean Elliot go on to lead vibrant, normal lives. A donated kidney lasts twenty years. But I was my dad's home nurse when his kidneys gave out. I changed bag after bag for his peritoneal dialysis. A few months later he died of pneumonia. His hospital was Columbia-Presbyterian.

I started the day normally. I took the kids to school, then I took the number one train back up to the hospital. I dreaded every step. The 168th street station is way underground but the ceiling is high and vaulted. You take a huge gray grafittied elevator up to the surface. The elevator operator was nodding off under the buzzing flourescent light. Perhaps the worst job ever.

I was already thinking of the film Jacob's Ladder when up top there is an old man yammering in Spanish about Dios y El Diablo. He holds a pamphlet that looks like Dianetics but says, "Hellfire Awaits the Unredeemed." I'm a Zen Atheist but geez.

I arrive at 9:10 for my nine o'clock eval but am left to wait until eleven. From the TV crouched in the ceiling Regis and what's her name come and go. Then Rachel Ray. Then The View. Finally they take over a dozen vials of blood.

When I actually talk to the surgeon he is kind and informative and suggests I also get on the waiting list in Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida. The aim is to go straight from my own beans to a third donated one without dialysis. With two kids to raise alone it would be hard to find three hours three times a week to hook myself up to a machine.

He kept asking if I had any donors. I said I'll start being extra nice to all my friends but it's a tricky question to ask. The operation on their end is now done laproscopically and they're back up and about in three days, but it's still a huge thing to ask. I would give mine if they would help somebody but that's only because I'll do anything to be a hero.