In some ways starting the dialysis process is a relief.
After the second surgery and being cleared of cancer last
June, my health focus went back to ordinary creatinine levels, which were
rising. As of December, they had floated to around 3.2, 3.7, 4.1, which was
higher than my previous levels in the 2s. As a reminder, 1 is normal, and
somewhere around 5 or 6 is generally where people would start dialysis. A
person can live comfortably on dialysis for years, though it is not my idea of
a good time, and it’s not particularly healthy for a person. Of course, a
person is eligible for a kidney transplant when they reach the level where they
need dialysis. I’ve met this requirement since January 2015, where I’m eligible
for dialysis or a transplant, but I’ve not started dialysis because I have felt
alright, and we haven’t scheduled a transplant because I can’t have one until
two years after they removed the cancerous kidney, or January 2016.
This put me in a strange situation. I am not eager to have
another transplant, but as my numbers increase and as I start to notice some
symptoms of kidney failure (which basically feel like a hangover: low appetite,
malaise, not healing as well, etc), getting a new kidney becomes a bit more
attractive, especially as it became apparent that it was only a matter of time.
However, because I’m ineligible until January, I’ve been desperately trying to
hold on to every point of creatinine, hoping to avoid going on dialysis. This
is a far cry from the freedom I had experienced earlier for the past 10 years,
when my kidney function was stable for years on end, or the freedom from choice
I had when I was first diagnosed and needed to start treatment immediately.
In one sense, the
kidney has been on an inexorable decline – there’s nothing to be done to stop
it. At the same time, a quick google search will turn up dozens of diets,
cleanses and tricks for improving kidney function. This spring I started to
take my declining numbers personally.
I’m not a hypochondriac, nor do I generally put stock in health
tricks outside of moderation. Still. I would read about changes in diet – less
meat, less salt, less potassium, less sugar, more echinacea – all seemingly
healthy options. But attempting to enact all of those changes while living a
life was more than I could handle, especially as eating had become a way for me
to relax and treat myself. As I became more stressed about my declining numbers
(stress compounded by my aggressive academic schedule), I started to find
EVERYTHING I ate as contributing to my kidney’s decline. Of course, I had to
keep eating, but it was a chore. I would get cereal as a treat, and then
discover that it was super salty. I learned that bread is about twice as salty
as corn chips. Going out to eat inevitably lead to too much meat AND too much
salt. I would have small successes, like pan fried salmon and brussel sprouts,
but those were rare (and expensive). Plus, every day I didn’t exercise felt
like a type of failure.
Being healthy wasn’t enough – I wanted to keep my numbers
down. I was trying to control something that was ultimately uncontrollable, but
something over which I was told I have a modicum of control. I couldn’t win.
However, I’ve had the fortune of experiencing the events of
my life as preordained in retrospect. This is a form of letting go. Somehow,
when the dust of each calamity, each elevated creatinine, had settled, I
inevitably looked back and thought, yup, that happened. That was a thing that
happened. That is now part of the story of my life. These countless clinic
rooms, familiar blood draws, unknowable hospital stays – I took these on, both
in those moments and into myself. My body became imprinted with these stories:
laughing exchanges with my kidney nurses and doctors; the taciturn reception I
received to my bad jokes with lab technicians; blurry trips to miserable ER
rooms, then miraculously back to normal in a few days; and every calculated
response to a concerned “how ARE you?”
Perhaps it has been my mercurial identity that has allowed
me to weather all of these stories, all of these selves. Yet there is something
sticky within me, something durable that has been shaped and hardened by these
experiences. I have resisted performing a sick body for so long that now that
it comes time to be sick, I’m struggling to act. Every time I faked it a little
bit I made a deposit into an identity to which I no longer have access. The inconvenient
parts of my experience had no voice. All of that shit has been building and a
solid wave of it is coming at me right now. That sounds a little dramatic but
it allowed me to say that life feels like a bit of a shit-storm right now,
which is kind of fun. Thanks for reading.
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