Kidney failure officially came in late January, but it started decades ago.
I have congenital hydronephrosis. That means I was born with kidneys that were only half tissue and half fluid right from the start. Not a problem for years, because one needs only one kidney - a fully functioning kidney - to live normally.
The problem was, that's really all I started with - two halves making a whole.
I didn't discover this, however, until I was 28, when it showed up on X-rays.
Again, that didn't present a problem at the time, but it did seven years later.
Horrible lower back pain led to the discovery of a massive stone - the size of a child's fist - that had to be surgically removed. I recovered and all seemed fine until ten more years passed and another surgery. From then on I was regularly monitored, but kidney function remained just fine, or at least nothing to really worry about.
Until this past year. Serum creatinine, which measures how well the kidneys clear wastes from the blood, continue to climb, but still within functional levels.
Then, in January, it his 9. Normal creatinine is about .5 and most folks who go suddenly to 9 are suddenly dead. That I was still active and vertical sort of confused my personal doctor and he sent me to a nephrologist.
And that led me to this, sitting four times a day next to an IV pole, transferring dialysis fluid from and into the peritoneal cavity.
Next Monday I begin training to use a machine called a cycler, which I'll connect to at night and it works while I'll sleep, leaving my days free away from an IV pole.
Yes, it's quite expensive. But we are all paying for it. End stage kidney failure dialysis is covered under Medicare Part B and would be if I were younger and not yet on Medicare, but didn't have insurance coverage. (My Medicare supplement I pay for covers all the co-pays and deductibles.) So you can imagine I'm not open to any debates about universal health care.
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