This would have made a great blog post at the time due to my emotions being all over the place! However this is now written over 2 years later….
So I was waltzing my way into End Stage Kidney Failure and I kind of knew it but didn’t take that much interest. For the past 6-12 months I was struggling, eating rubbish, drinking my fair share of alcohol and not the type that was good for your kidneys. Everytime I ate rubbish or had a drink I felt rough, not just hungover rough, proper rough. I was heading towards needing a transplant or dialysis and I hadn’t done my research. I always assumed, as stated in a previous post, that I’d be fine, my head was truly buried in the sand until the 18th September 2018
I casually walked into my nephrology appointment at Clatterbridge Hospital wanting to talk to my regular consultant, Dr Ledson, however I was greeted with a student nephrologist as Dr Ledson was not in work that day. This already put me on the back foot, I had a speech prepared about how I wanted to change my life, that I was still young enough to change my life, my speech was now out of the window! Instead I sat there for what seemed like an hour but only took in the opening paragraphs. “You’re eGFR is 18, its dropped in the past 12 months from 44 to 36 to 28 to 18. At this rate you are going to need a transplant or dialysis in the next 3 months or you will die” along with “Your BMI is too high to be considered for Transplant at this stage”. Boom, there it was, he may as well have just said “Listen here fatty, you’re in a proper right state here, you’ve f****d your life up and in reality you haven’t got that long left to live”. Anything else that was said in that meeting went straight in one ear and out of the other, my life was over. I know look back on this as ‘the kick’ I needded
So for the next 48 hours I was completely and utterly useless, my life was absolutely pointless for this time. And why? The first thing I did was to open Google… Never, ever, ever open Google. ‘How Long Can You Live On Dialysis’ was what I typed in. The answer was not what I wanted to read. In big bold letters I saw 5 Years from an unknown American website. Well that hit me and it hit me hard. What had I done? Why hadn’t I looked after myself more? I’ll never see my girls grow up and get married! Etc, etc, etc…. Thoughts racing through my head and out of control
Fast forward a couple of days… I’d ‘given my head a wobble’ and with the support of my wife and close friends I put a plan of action in place with my first goal of getting on to the transplant list. I was fortunate that I have the energy to get out there and get things done, as I’ve found out there are alot of people in a similar position to me who are too tired to move, up until recent times I never experienced this issue so I decided to exercise, more specifically I started to run, run for my life as I called it
I’ve wrote a whole page on this that can be accessed here….. this describes how I lost weight and improved my outlook of the condition and boosted my mental health
It’s fair to say that up until this point I hadn’t researched my condition, I didn’t want to know, 27 months later I’m still no expert but I understand a hell of a lot more what’s going on with me and my body. 27 months on I am nearly 4 stone lighter and my eGFR is fighting fit at 12, over the past 2 years it’s basically varied from 11 to 15
Over the past 27 months I’ve spoken to a lot of people who suffer with Chronic Kidney Disease and I no longer fear having a transplant, I do fear Dialysis, in fact it scares the bejesus out of me but I am armed with information to fight it if it comes to it
My advice is simple, never look back, do not dwell on what you could have and should have done previously as you can’t change the past. Focus your energy on the here, now and the future. Research is also key, research your condition and get to know it, what you should eat and drink, what exercise you can do but never feel guilty for missing a day, never feel guilty for eating a burger, just look after yourself and keep positive
Living with Dodgy Kidneys! 