Curses & Blessing

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Welcome back. It was tough deciding not to have any more children. My ideal family would have been 2 for sure. That was  okay as God knew what he was doing by giving me a beautiful daughter. I was told several things on keeping my existing kidneys healthy. I was to watch my salt intake and my protein intake. When your kidneys start to fail they don’t process certain things well. I was told that if I watch these things I probably wouldn’t end up on dialysis  until I was in my 50′s or 60′s. At the time I was 29 and thought to myself that’s a long time away. Well I only made it till age 34. I had to see the kidney doctor ever 6 months. Every time it was blood testing and the same questions? The blood which was drawn was to see how my kidney function was. Anything below 1.0 is considered normal. When my daughter was born I was 2.0. Then in 1993 when I was 33 my blood work showed a jump from 2.0 to 4.0. My doctor put me in touch with the dialysis people. They tried real hard to put a fistula in my harm. I truly balked at the ideal of that. I had a small child, a life, things to do, places to go, people to see, as they say. I had not time for hemo-dialysis. So I opted for peritoneal dialysis. This was a dialysis where I had a catheter placed in my peritoneal cavity (abdomen) and did 4 fluid exchanges per day. This fluid was a sugar solution which as blood passed through it, collected the toxins. After 4 to 6 hours I drained the fluid and replace it with new fluid. This was the optimum way for dialysis, because it takes off almost all the toxins, and you are not restricted to fluids or food intake. Before I had my catheter surgery. The people at the dialysis place showed me what the caither looked like. I am the type of patient who wants to know exactly what is going to take place. I ask questions. I realize there are people who just go on and don’t care what is happening regarding their health. It is always important to be informed.  It could save your life.  Well when I was showed this catheter my words were “well that is not so bad”. From where it came out of my body, it only hung out about 3″. Me who is vain on how I look was saying “I can deal with that”.  I outwardly preparing, but mentally I was not wanting to accept that this KIDNEY FAILURE was about to happen.  One of the biggest things with kidney failure is anemia. You kidneys help make red blood cells. In February 1994 they place I was living in was a 2 story. I remember vaccuming the 1st floor and started up the stairs…..and before I was half way up, it was all I could do to finish. I had to hire a maid, for a year to help me clean my house. Then the middle of May, I driving home one afternoon. I started to fall asleep. I noticed on my breaks at work I was taking naps. This was totally out of place for me. The Friday before Memorial Day my doctor called and told me that I needed to get on dialysis right away. He was scheduling my surgery for the following Friday. At that moment I thought I was living a movie scene. Half of me wanted to faint, and the other wanted to scream “this is not happening”.  Stay tuned for what happened next………………….Until then, if you have comments or questions let me know.