So... how did you know you were in kidney failure?

This is a question I get a lot, and the easiest answer is "I didn't know". Everybody's body reacts differently to renal shutdown and failure can be chornic or acute. Hopefully for most people it's acute and the likelihood that their kidney function will resume is good. Chronic renal failure on the other hand is usually associated with am illness, infection or disease.

Most kidney trouble starts off with  renal insufficiency which means your kidneys are not able to clear as many waste products and water due to an ongoing or chronic problem. In my case, as I know now, was that I had high blood pressure since the day I was born. I was labeled a hyperactive child and at one point even given Ritalin. Every doctor's visit I can remember growing up my blood pressure elevated but it was written off as me being excitable or stressed because of the office visit.

 Over the course of 31 years,  the uncontrolled high blood pressure I had ended with both my kidneys completely failing and leaving me with what Doctors called end stage renal disease or ESRD.

Okay enough of the who what when where how.

In December of 2001 and went home to visit my family for the holidays. I could barely lift my suitcase let alone climb a flight of stairs. At our family holiday dinner, I was naseous and excused myself several times to go throw up. I knew I would have to return to New York by the afternoon of December 24 as I had a late night flight to work. A supervisor happened to be at the gate of my commuter flight when it arrived. He took one look at me said, "I'm putting you on the sick list, go home and get some sleep." and I did just that.

 

I got home around seven o'clock at night and fell asleep on the couch with the TV on. The next thing I know my roommate, Bettina, is shaking me awake. I remember looking at her and saying, "Wow your home early. Did your trip get canceled?" She replied, "No hun, it's the 26th." I stared at the ceiling and realized I'd been asleep for almost 36 hours. I tried to situp but couldn't feel my legs. I told Betina I need to go to the hospital and she helped me up, to her car, and drove me to the hospital. At the time I was 5'8" and 148 pounds. Looking back I was so thin, that should've been an indicator that something was wrong.

So we get to the hospital and by this time I can walk but I am in an incredible amount of pain. In the emergency room they drew some initial bloods and paged the nephrologist on-call. When my blood work came back, the doctor told me that my numbers were so high that I should already be dead. He was very surprised that I was not in a coma. That's when I realized I was in a coma for almost 36 hours.
I remember very clearly a nurse walking up to me and looking at my chart, and then asking the same questions everyone else had asked me. After I answered her questions she looked at me and said,"You don't look like you're in kidney failure."The symptoms of chronic renal failure are:

Change in frequency of urination with a marked change in color of urine
Decreased urine output with the need to urinate frequently / excessively at night
Bloating up of entire body (face, hands, legs, feet, ankles)
Constant feeling of tiredness, even while relaxing
Skin eruptions combined with severe itching
Loss of appetite
Bad breath
Severe nausea and vomiting
Constantly being short of breath
Feeling cold even in warm surroundings
Feeling of dizziness most of the time
Poor concentration
Pain on the side of the back
Weakness
Headaches
Frequent muscle cramps
Excessive thirst
High blood pressure
Marked paleness of skin and nail color


Out of these symptoms mine included: decrease in urine output, weakness, loss of appetite, and high blood pressure. Some people may exhibit all of the symptoms I've listed, some people may only have one or two. If it's chronic shutdown, it's been going on for a while so you may not notice it until its too late.

It took almost a full 24 hours for the hospital to stabilize my potassium levels before they could perform emergency dialysis but what a world of difference. I felt like a whole new human being after my first session. Wow...was I sick.

Everybody's body reacts differently to renal shutdown and failure can be chronic or acute. Hopefully for most people it's acute and the likelihood that their kidney function will resume is good. Chronic renal failure on the other hand is usually associated with an illness, infection or disease.  Both types can be tested for by a simple urinalysis. If it shows a high level of protein leakage into your urine..then there's more testing to be done.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned.....the next blog will be my hospital stay.....

Red

You mean there's more?

I was working a flight the other day to Los Angeles. Having been with my company for almost 15 years,  I know most of the flight attendants at my base. The majority of them know me from my role of activism and unionism on a local level. Many of them have been through the journey with me from ill health and being at death's door, to the Phoenix rising from the ashes once again to don his F/A wings and get  back on board an aircraft.
This particular trip I was flying was with a lot of people I hadn't flown with before. Most of them had recently transferred to New York from various bases around our system. At the beginning of the flight while I was doing my introductions a few of the flight attendants said, "I know your name". I smiled and wondered. Would it be from the position I held within our Union or was it from the fantastical story of my roller coaster ride with my health issues.
It was abit of each.
One Flight Attendant, who had recently transferred in from Washington DC, actually knew my living kidney donor,  Cindy. The other Flight Attendant had transferred from Los Angeles and knew of me from a very vocal position as a Union Rep.

At the end of her five hours and 41 minute trek to Los Angeles we decided to get together in the bar of our short  layover hotel and have a happy hour glass of wine. We talked shop and then the questions came out about my transplant.
To tell the full story of the transplant, I can't just tell about the transplant. It always leads into other questions that people have. One of them that I get very often is how did you make it through all this?
My answer is simple; I considered the alternative unacceptable.

My story as I told it originally on this blog back in November of 2010, is a compacted version of the events that happened. It was my first attempt to get it out to any kind of a readership to start to tell my story. It wasn't until this last trip that I realized I needed to tell each individual part of the story because they all have such amazing facets, drama and emotion.  My crew, even into the next day returning home, stated that after hearing my story and everything I'd been through, it really made them look at life a different way. And that's what I want.
Over the next several weeks here and there, I will detail specific periods of the past nine years of my life and what I went through in detail and how it helped me stay alive.

stay tuned my friends, there is more to come...


Red