K is for Kidney Failure

      Unless you are a medical professional or studying to be one, chances are you could breeze through life without ever really knowing what the kidneys do or why what they do is so important.  I have found in life that unless a condition directly affects me or someone that I love in my immediate family I know little about it.  We live our lives relatively ignorant on a need to know basis.  Unless we have a child or family member who is autistic, we would never ever truly know what that all entails.  So is the case of kidney failure.

      When I was 23 years old, I still lived at home with my parents and my mom was my best friend.  We did everything together and literally were like two peas in a pod.  Every Memorial Day weekend it was tradition for my Dad to man the barbecue and create the most delicious chicken while watching the Indianapolis 500 race on a small portable television on the deck.  My mom and I would rush around preparing food to compliment the chicken.  It was a yearly event in my family.  It was something we always did and the day had been christened Chicken Day as far back as I could remember.  That particular day my mom tried to hide the fact she was not feeling well.  The next day was when her health took a dramatic turn for the worse.

         My dad woke early and headed off to the garage he kept his semi truck while he was home to work on his truck.    My mom woke up with a nose bleed that lasted all day long.  She insisted she was fine.  I wanted to call the doctor, but she stubbornly insisted on waiting for my dad to come home.  By the time he arrived late that afternoon, her nose had been bleeding for the better share of the day.  My dad gave her holy hell for being so stubborn and we rushed her to the doctor.  I remember watching the doctor draw blood that day, and the fact that her blood was an unusual tangerine color.

        We were told to rush her to the local hospital where more tests could be performed. I remember waking in the center of the night to the loud pealing of the telephone.  I will never forget that phone call.  It was my mom.  She was crying and hysterical.  They were rushing her to another hospital immediately.  Her kidneys were failing and if she didn’t have dialysis immediately she would be dead before dawn.  It was a turning point in not only her life, but in my own.
  
        

          I was horrified.  My dad and I raced to the hospital and the nightmarish roller coaster ride of her final year and a half on this earth began. I learned in a quick hurry all about the kidneys and what happens when they fail.  If a patient misses dialysis even once you can be sure of planning their funeral.  A person’s kidneys work as a filtering device to cleanse the blood and eliminate toxins and waste through pee.  I found out through my mom’s experience that if your kidneys fail, you don’t pee anymore.   Instead you fill up and bloat with fluid that poisons your system and kills you in short order.  A new regime began with dialysis 3 times a week, no drinking even if thirsty, and no more salt.  My mother would eat ice chips and even bought a machine to shred ice at the time.  The more fluid that needed to be cleansed and drained off the body, the harder the dialysis was to revive from.  With it came the dangers of having to constantly be given blood thinners.

         By fall it was discovered that my mom had multiple myeloma which is cancer of the bone marrow.  The cancer cells were evident everywhere on her skeletal system. Because they weren’t in one concentrated area, radiation could not be performed.  Because of her kidney failure, she was not a candidate for a stem cell transplant.  Because of her cancer, she was not a candidate for a kidney transplant either.  Everything was against her, and eventually the end came.  Before this happened to my mom I never realized how important the kidneys were to a person’s survival.  I never dreamed my mom would die at the tender age of 51, but she did.   I will never know how she coped with dialysis, the needles, or the excruciating pain.  You do what you have to in this life.    Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.