A Pet Named Anxiety

Name it, leash it and take it for a walk.

The only two reasons I am telling this story:

1. Because I am not alone.
2. And neither are you.

Anxiety is something new to me, but not to many of us. For the past four years, I have had to put almost my entire life on hold as my father returned to my life after several years, with end-stage renal disease. The kind that requires you to sit on a machine as it launders your blood, clearing toxins and impurities and returning it to your body for three to four hours a day, three times a week. The first year was the worst, I had to take a crash course in understanding the disease, find a treatment centre that would take him (first we went for a place that saved us a couple hundred dollars a week, but was a two hour drive both ways) and also find a doctor or series of doctors.

Kidney disease isn’t just a case of: oh, your filters are broken, so we filter externally and you are right as rain. The kidneys also produce vital components for your body and blood, something we eventually…