A bit of history

To begin - I was diagnosed with having one kidney when I was 13, in 1978. The doctors at the time didn't really alert my parents to any potential problems down the line and said that it was doing the work of 2 kidneys. That seems strange in retrospect - why was the biopsy wanted in the first place, then? Luckily, my mother wouldn't allow them to do a biopsy, so I had a scan instead.

When I was in my 20s, my creatinine (a protein that measures the kidney function) level was found to be elevated and they diagnosed me with chronic kidney disease. Though there were multiple attempts to find out the reason for this, no cause was ever defined.

My disease progressed very slowly.

From the time I found out about my disease, I took great care of my diet (mostly vegetarian with a lot of good flavour, organic unless i could really not find or afford it, lots of veg and grains, low salt, low sugar, not much alcohol) and health from that point on. I am not sure that this is the reason that the disease took a full 20+ years to become end-stage renal failure, but I like to believe it to be so.

I am glad I left the U.S. when I did, in 2006. Did I sense that end-stage was near? My levels had been so stable - I hovered around 35% function for a very long time. I had really convinced myself that I would be 70 years old by the time that happened. But I was 43. Last year in April, my kidney function took a dive suddenly - it went from 25% to about 12%. It coincided with a very stressful time - my boyfriend and I had bought a small house in January and it had turned into a nightmare, with us living in the 2 rooms the whole time it was being rebuilt.

When I look back at last year, it all seems a blur. I realise now that I was on auto-pilot for a lot of it. Finding a donor just seemed natural to me. I didn't think about it, I just went full speed ahead. Now I find that I can't believe it. My head is spinning a bit from it!