Please Share This Post. I’m still searching for a living kidney donor. Email me at sharonneedsakidney@gmail.com and/or call RI Hospital Kidney Transplant Center at 401-440-8562. My blood type is O Positive. Even if you don’t have that blood type you can be considered a donor.
Can you donate your kidney to me? Email me at sharonneedsakidney@gmail.com
and call RI Hospital Kidney Transplant Center at 401-440-8562. My doctors tell me that I may need to do daily dialysis soon. I sure would like to find a kidney. My blood type is O positive, however, even if you don’t have that blood type, you can be a donor. Please share this post with anyone you know. Visit my website: https://sharonnnedsakidney.org
for more information.
Vacation Day with my niece, Jane and her husband Tom
Chatham, MA June, 2023
I continue my search for a living kidney donor. If you are inclined to be a donor for me, please email me and/or call the RI Hospital Kidney Transplant Center at 401-440-8562. My poem, Elegy for My Brother in memory of my brother is recently published in Paterson Literary Review, Issue 51, 2023, p. 150. My brother Ted lived well the Gospel story of sharing his talents. He brought both joy and sometimes much needed relief to persons in need. This is my tribute to him:
Elegy for My Brother
im Ted Foley 1939 to 2012
You joke when you call pretending
you need help—a bird on your head
you can’t get rid of, and I laugh.
When you ask how I’m doing
I tell you about the soup I’m making:
roasted red pepper and sweet potato
You pry a little more, I heard
you’re having some money troubles.
So I let you know and you pay
my rent for a year. You teach me
how to study my accounts
without making me feel small.
You say, I can count
but you can write.
I remember
when the six of us were kids
our living room had only five seats.
More than once you gave up your chair for me.
I reach for the expensive
cobalt loafers that I wore that last
Thanksgiving when the six of us were seated
at your hearth. I hear
the male cardinal sing his daily anthem.
Is that you?
If by chance it is your calling to be a kidney donor, go to my website and call the RI Hospital Kidney Transplant Center at 401-440-8562.
Happy Birthday today to my brother, Bill; my uncle Len Moreau, and my niece Jane. I imagine Bill and Len feasting in heaven today and Jane, still tethered here, hoping to have her favorite cake. As I reflect on their lives, I deepen my understanding that there is not just one way to be a saint. You just need to know what is your calling in life and respond to it. Bill as a husband, father, teacher, and healer knew his calling and lived it. I miss being able to visit him today with a birthday card. Len was a husband, father, speech therapist, and great talker. I cherish the talks I had with him as a young adult. Jane is a daughter, niece, wife, cousin, friend, mother, and grandmother—I don’t know how she answers all these calls. But we love you, Jane!
I continue to search for someone who can be a kidney donor for me. If you feel called to be a kidney donor, please visit my website and call RI Hospital Kidney Transplant Center at 401-444-8562.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. One of the best mental hygiene strategies is to be aware of your safe spots. As a school social worker in East Greenwich, RI, I taught elementary school age students how to identify their safe spots. I would ask the students to draw a picture of their safe spot. Some children drew pictures of small spaces like being in a tent or under their bed where they could snuggle and hide. Others drew pictures of large spaces like a tree house or the beach that gave them a beautiful view. Some drew pictures of their parents or friends holding their hands and it did not matter where they actually were. I tried to convey the idea that whenever we feel uncertain or afraid, we can always mentally go back to our safe spot.
One of my safe spots is a lake in Cape Cod where as a child I vacationed with my family. It is called Long Pond or Pleasant Lake and is located in the town of East Harwich. When I think of this spot, I can actually feel the relief, the calm, the abundance of family support in laughter and good times. Here is a picture of my brother Kevin and I visiting this lake again
DIARY Monday after Easter, April
Today is the real Easter morning. Yesterday was overcast and chilly. This morning is still, warm, newly awakened. One walks out into it like a flower just opened.
The world sounds like spring, like summer, this morning. So still, so perfect, so whole is the morning that one can hear all the small sounds dropped into it. One hears superhumanly—like God…..
When I was young, I always felt a morning like this meant a promise of something wonderful—for me perhaps. Good things happening I did not know of…..The morning was a “sign”……
I still believe it is a “sign” but nor for anything good happening to me or the world, anything specific….Hate and cruelty and evil are still rampant, war goes on.
And yet it is a sign. It is a sign that in spite of these things beauty still exists and goes on side by side with horror. That there is love and goodness and beauty and spirit in the world—always. This is only one of the times when it is clothed in flesh—in the flesh of a spring morning. We doubt and we need the sign in order to believe. A morning like this is the morning of Resurrection—when we see and believe, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”
From War Within and Without: Diaries and Letter 1939-1944 by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1980
I’m reaching high to have a preemptive kidney transplant, and I’m searching for a living kidney donor. If you can consider being a donor, go to my website: https://sharonneedsakidney.org and call the Rhode Island Hospital Transplant Team at 401-444-8562. According to the
National Kidney Foundation, a preemptive kidney transplant is the preferred method of transplant when compared to post-dialysis transplants. The website states that the benefits and risks of a preemptive transplant are the following:
The website identifies the Risks of Dialysis as the following:
As a school social worker in the East Greenwich Public Schools, I developed a program for early elementary school children that I called Relax and Focus. I did a series of lessons in each first grade classroom, reading stories on social-emotional themes, and introducing words to help the children describe their feeling states. I also led the children in an exercise on focused attention and breathing as a means of relaxing the body and the mind. The children looked forward to this lesson every week, and I truly enjoyed this work as well.
Happy St. Valentine’s Day
I borrow the words of John O’Donohue in his poem For Eros
“May the words of love
Reach you and fluster
Your held self
The way a silhouette of breeze
Excites a meadow.”
Be with me in my search to find a living kidney donor.
Visit my website: https://sharonneedsakidney.org
I love to eat and enjoy cooking with vegetables, fruits, and lean meats. Over the years,
I’ve adjusted my diet several times to accommodate my food sensitivities and to address a variety of minor health issues with a nutritional intervention. Mark Mincolla, PhD, a nutritionist, has guided me on this path of healthy eating. When I was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease, I also consulted with a dietician through Fresenius Kidney Care. At first, I went wild on checking out various foods—the amounts of potassium, phosphorous, and sodium. I found, though, that my greatest mistake was adding salt to my foods. I settled on eliminating added salts and decreasing the amount of protein in my diet. I have found ways of adjusting recipes to be salt-free and dairy-free. The following is one of my favorite soup recipes. It’s great to have on hand on a winter night.
Curried Vegetable Soup
Adapted from the book 100 Best Fresh Soups, p. 103
Sharon Foley’s version
½ cup olive oil
2 onions, chopped
2 carrots, diced
1 to 2 parsnips, diced
2 to 3 small turnips
1 apple, peeled, cored, chopped
1 Tbs mild curry powder
4 cups chicken stock
1 cup water
Juice of 1 or 2 lemons
1 can coconut milk
Pour the oil in the pan and add the chopped onions.
Sauté gently until soft but now brown.
Add the turnip, carrots, parsnips, and apple and continue to cook for an additional 3 to 4 minutes
Stir in the curry powder until the vegetable are well coated, then pour in the stock and the water. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for about 45 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste (I leave this step out) and add the lemon juice.
Process the mixture with an immersion blender until smooth.
Add the coconut milk and heat the soup through again till it almost comes to a boil again.
This makes about six to seven 2 cup servings. I freeze the servings in individual containers and then save them in Food Saver bags.
When reheating, you could add a little more coconut cream –or any other cream you like.
