These words remind us of a well-known song from The Sound of Music (Rodgers and Hammerstein, 1959) that poetically highlights a very simple concept that should be part of anyone’s life: Doing something you like will make life’s difficulties easier to handle.
When a person has a kidney transplant everything changes, and it is easy to let the new challenges take control. Every aspect of life revolves around the transplant, whether it is managing medications or dealing with symptoms or complications. Outings are limited because of the many appointments with the doctor; hobbies and interests are often forgotten.
Divert mind from transplant
Being a kidney transplant recipient should not become the only focus of life.
Continuing to do fun and interesting activities will help maintain a sense of normality to life with new kidney.
How am I Doing?
Make a list of your five favorite activities or interests in the table and write down the date when you last did each of them.
See below for how Robert started out his table.
| ACTIVITY | DATE LAST DONE | HAVE YOU STOPPED DOING THIS? WHY OR WHY NOT? |
| Play tennis. | Before the transplant (more than 1 year). |
WHY: Because I still don’t feel safe playing tennis and I’ve been feeling discouraged from practicing exercises. |
What Can I do?
Take a look at the reasons why you stopped doing these activities and think about what you could do or change in your life to be able to do them again.
Schedule some time each week to do some of these activities. Check out the calendar’s model in the section “Putting it all together- your personal plan of action” for tips on planning a good day!