Arnie’s Story

Site created on September 3, 2022

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting. 
Arnie has been living with Kidney Disease for several years. In 2018, a biopsy revealed his kidney's were beginning to fail, which is when this journey truly began. Since then he has had regular check-ups with a kidney specialist. In 2021, based on the fuctioning level of his kidney's he was referred to Mayo Clinic in Rochester to undergo a transplant evaluation. June of 2021 Arnie began the testing process to be approved to be a transplant candidate. After several rounds of testing, we received word in February 2022 that he was approved and was added to the transplant list. Emily, Jessie, and Andy immediately completed the donor evaluation. Emily and Jessie were not approved to move forward, however based on Andy's blood type he was able to move forward with additional testing. He began that process in March 2022 which lead to the good news we received August 31st that he is an APPROVED MATCH!

Newest Update

Journal entry by Kathy Johnson

Good Afternoon, it has been quite some time since I have updated this, no news is good news right!

With the Holidays approaching just wanted to update everyone on my patient he has been doing really well and enjoying the outdoors hunting, snow blowing and getting ready to do some ice fishing.

He has one little bump with the glucose,  he now has  been takin off insulin and they are trying Glipizide in the am and Metformin in the pm hoping that this will help, so he if very happy with that. He did have a consultation on Nov. 30th at Mayo and the white blood counts have been really low so he is Neutropenic (which with the counts down so low he is very susceptible to bacterial infections) so they advise stay low key with the public make sure you wear you mask, wash hands, sanatize) we all of course know the drill.  They did give him an infusion that day and he has lab this coming Monday the 12th.  Praying they will be much better. They did also extend his back to work date to 12/31/22.  He has a biopsy on Jan 9th which will check how that kidney is working. 

Emily Joe Kayle Tyler and Rachelle and the 3 dogs came up for a couple days over Thanksgiving was so nice to have the crew here.  Andy our wonderfull donor and Jessie and there family took a trip to Mexico for Jessie's 40th Birthday coming up on Dec 15th... Another blesssing... 

Arnie spent a few weekends in Fourtown just 2 1/2 hrs from here at Deer Camp with his cousins Sam, Mike, & Scott Cameron. He was in heaven to get out of here and hunt. Came home with a nice 6pt buck. He also has been cutting trees  in the woods, blowing some snow, doing anything to get some exercise. We have noticed the hard manual activity helps the glucose more then the daily walks.

Miss each and everyone of you we cannot thank you for the kind text, cards, gifts,  prayers and all the love we have recieved from all of our family and friends! 

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