My you have got a big one! (My experience of kidney failure)

Member Name: Scooobydooo

Product:	My experience of kidney failure
Date:	25/03/04 (304 review reads)
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Disadvantages: disability

My nickname with friends is Sickly Child and it has long been a standing joke, especially if I walk into a room with someone who has got a cold as I will get it. I am one of those people that pick up anything and everything.

So when I was a mere chick of 17, I was one day getting ready for the Xmas Party at work when all of a sudden, I got excrutiating pain in my right side. I tried to ignore it and grabbed all my party gear and started out on my treck to work. Brilliant I thought as was so looking forward to my first ever office party.

However as I walked down the hill to the bus stop, the pains got worse and it was 6am in the morning and not a sole around. Dad was not answering the phone at home and I could not move for pain, so in the end I rang an ambulance. I knew something was seriously wrong. Well it was appendicitus, but that hospital admission also showed something else up on a scan.

My left kidney was very badly scared and not functioning properly. The doctor asked me when did I have an operation on it. I told him, I never had and he looked for a scar and was suprised to see it was not there. He explained to me, it must have been going on for a few years as the right kidney was a big one. They wanted to do more tests and further investigations but I declined as it had never caused me any problems other than wetting the bed as a youngster. My attitude was why fix what is not broken.

Years went by and my kidneys seemed very happy plodding along until the age of 24 when I looked in my wee and there was blood. No problem, off to the doctors I trotted and not very concerned when he referred me to the specialist. He told me that the kidney was struggling and that they would do everything in their power to save it medically.

So another couple of years went by and then like a bolt out of the blue, no longer could I go to the gym 6/7 times a week as it would start with a mild pain and become excrutiating. I had good day
s and bad days, but after a while the good days were few and far between.

I had been a very energetic youngster and was always in some sort of scrape but I now was prone to kidney infections and you could guarantee that one week out of four would be spent in hospital. Apparently i was suffering from Reflux of the kidney where your wee goes back up the tubes and destroys the kidneys. I had alsorts of scans and the like and they showed that my left kidney was seriously failing and functioning at around 8%. Now when i went to the toilet there was protein and blood which showed infection and my life became that of a housebound pensioner. I had no energy to move and things that I loved doing like decorating were now impossible.

After another couple of years went by and everything had escalated they decided that the only option would be to take it away. I was petrified now, this is a main organ and although you only need 1 kidney to live in, I had become quite accustomed to have it around, plus I was petrified incase I died under the anaesthetic. The night before my operation, I went to the hospital chapel and prayed to god that I would be the most well behaved person in the world if he would let me live. I was a bit anxious as hubby had not turned up and when he did it was due to the fact his boss would not let him have the time off to come and see me.

The operation went ahead and my left kidney had now had to do the job by himself otherwise if this fails, it would be dialysis. They warned me of both success and failure and they said that I could either go on a machine if the operation did not work or have it pumped into my stomach through a hole in my tummy which would be done by myself. I decided on the latter. When I was in hospital, we were all cold and the nurses would let us cuddle the bags of fluids that they gave you on dialysis as they had to be kept warm in the microwave. So when they started to go cold, off they went back to be rep

laced by another.

I was one of the lucky ones. Today my left kidney is monitored by my doctors and specialists as there are still problems with infections but he is happy in there by himself, but I am due to go into hospital soon to sort this problem out.

I had asked them not to give me an epidural but they thought better and did. When I woke up in my hospital bed, I was screaming out in pain and the nurse come and said what the problem was. I told her, that I felt as though I had been split open and a red hot poker put inside me. After a while she said this was impossible as the epidural had been done. She told me that I could not wriggle my toes as I was paralised from the waist down. I was still screaming the place down in pain and used some choice language, after all if someone had put a red hot poker on you, you would know the pain. The nurses started to get miffed with me and pulled back the sheets on the bed and said go on then wriggle your feet, it is impossible. So I obliged and the nurses flew out of the room. I carried on screaming the ward down and then all of a sudden there were machines and everything around me and doctors shouting. I heard one of them shouting her blood pressure is dropping really low.

The nurse said she was so sorry for not beliving me whilst the doctors were shoving tubes and everything in my arms. The next minute, my blood pressure got so low that I zonked out and that was that. I must have woke up a few hours later, with bleeps and monitors everywhere and when my hubby came in he was petrified. They explained what had happened and apparently the needle had slipped and could have paralised me. As it has slipped it had not been effective. Luckily it had slipped near my spine but not close enough to cause me paralysis.

The hospital was really run down and now it is closed and has transferred. We had to pay to have coffee in their or bring in your own and the food was out of microwave boxes.
So af
ter 2 days and with drips and bags coming out of my orificies, they said it was time for a well earnt bath. Brilliant I thought and the nurses placed my tubes and bags and me in a wheelchair and off we went to the bathroom only to find there was no hot water in the ward. So off down the corridor riding in a wheelchair, I looked up and the ceiling was caving in. They had to put sheets on the floor to catch the rain. We promtly arrived at another ward but they did not have a bath harness to lift me, I told the young nurse not to worry and together we would manage even though I could not feel my body from the waist down.

The nurse had to stay with me incase I decided to sink under the water and together we managed to get into the bath and chill. The problem came when I had to get out of the bath as I could not move and the young nurse could not budge me. She was petrified of getting the sack as she knew there should have been a harness. I told her to calm down and burst out laughing. there was I with tubes and bags and stitched from side to side and temporarily paralised and but naked and stuck in the bath. We burst out laughing, there was nothing else for it. After god knows how many attempts at getting out of the bath, we gave up and said it would be easier for her to bring my bedding here. In the end another nurse passed and helped us and we swore her to secrecy. We all were laughing even though I was in a lot of pain.

So that is my story of my kidney failure, as I said I still get infections and there is a problem at the moment which i have to go into hospital for it to be sorted out, but we have a brilliant NHS and to be fair and honest whenever I have needed it, it has always been there for me.

People say to me are you not scared in case it fails? No not really. If it going to happen, then I am going to have a whale of a time. I amnot one to sit down and cry and cry and cry. Live life as best as you can. In fact the benefits
agency who
I have to claim incapacity from keep asking me to stay on benefit, but i want to work, it is just that every time I go back to work I become really ill. However they do not seem to understand that just because I am disabeled does not mean to say I want never again to work. So we have come to an understanding that I will stay on it for a while longer and then go back to part time work as full time is too much. But If i give up my dreams of going back into employment than I give up been independent and I do not want my disabilities as I also have osteoarthritis and have to use crutches in the morning. I want to earn my own money like I used to. I am not bothered if I am worse off, but working is so important.

Employers these days are supposed to take on disabeled people and I am well qualified but they do not see me, they see the disability.

So this is the state of play at the moment, but whatever your disability is, do not let it get you down, fight it all the way.

Karen :0)

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