In May of 1997, during a routine pre-operative blood test prior to knee surgery, I was told that my kidneys were only functioning at 8%. I was shocked, sad, mad, and in denial all at once. According to doctors, my kidneys must have been on a gradual function-decline over those past ten years due to either a strep-throat infection left untreated, or undetected high blood pressure, or both. Although I had been feeling unusually tired in the weeks prior to my diagnosis, and also had some night-time leg cramps, there wasn't anything else that would lead me to believe I was a walking time-bomb.
Doctors told me to keep in the back of my mind, the fact that I would be needing dialysis in the very near future. My denial was fast and furious...lol. I would have been "gone in sixty seconds", but I needed to stay to have the knee surgery, which was an emergency due to a fall I took, and not elective. I came through the knee surgery, barely, and wasn't even given full dosage pain relief because my kidneys would not have been able to clear out the meds.
After a few days, I regained enough strength to release myself - A.M.A.- Against Medical Advice - and hobbled my way out of the hospital. During the next few months, I basically concentrated on regaining my knee's mobility and strength, and barely gave a thought to the impending doom of dialysis. Going from two crutches, to one crutch, to cane, to nothing, took me the whole summer. It would probably have taken six weeks for a normal person to recover. I actually felt pretty good, for a dying person, and convinced myself that my diagnosis was wrong. I mean, you see it on t.v. all the time. I'm still amazed today, that a person can still go on with only 8% kidney function. The human body is amazing.
A few months later, however, my life almost came to a slow, not screeching, halt. I say "slow" because, at least in my case, I was ceasing to exist, little by little. My knee doctor would later tell me that he wished, if he had to die of SOME disease, that it would be kidney failure, because you just kind of sleep and never wake up. No pain. Has anyone ever heard that a frog will let itself be boiled to death if the heat is turned up very slowly, in increments, and over a period of time? It's true. That's sort of kidney failure. I WAS that frog.
It was right after Thanksgiving of 1997. I just couldn't get out of bed...for like ten days to two weeks! I had no energy and no appetite. I hardly recognized myself in the mirror. The face of kidney failure is horrible. Monstrous. Certain parts of the face swell, while other parts sink in. The skin takes on a horridly pale hue, and other parts of the body develop spots. Some red, some peeling. Still no pain. I thought I had the flu, but a flu without fever?
Then it happened. I sat up to blow my nose, which was stuffy, but had nothing in it. Blood started actually free-flowing out of both nostrils at an alarming pace. Some of it liquid, some of it clumped up. My son was the only one with me at the time, and he was only 10 years old. I called a friend to come over to stay with him a while, then bring him to his dad's house. I called 911, all awhile trying to plug up my nose with napkins, paper towels, gauze and cotton balls.
When the EMT's arrived at my apartment, they stuck sticks, which I later learned were silver nitrate sticks, up my nostrils, which burnt like hell, to stop the bleeding. Then they took my vitals and I went by ambulance to the Emergency Room of my local hospital. My kidneys had totally shut down. The bleeding was partly due to extremely high blood pressure brought on by kidney failure, and an extremely low platelet count, also caused by the kidney failure. I was fading fast and needed immediate help.
Please stay tuned for Part 2...to find out how one particular doctor saved my life that night, and what I had to go through after that.
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