Highest Rated Comments


AbysmalMoose5 karma

You've got to fight for yourself. My sister spent years going from doctor to doctor about severe pain and doctor after doctor told her to suck it up and it was just period pain. She did her own research, diagnosed herself with endometriosis, then went from doctor to doctor till one was willing to test her (had to cut her open to see if she was right). Sure enough, she nailed it.

You have to be your own advocate. If you aren't being heard, find someone else who will listen.

AbysmalMoose3 karma

For me, there was almost no warning. Or at least none that I knew about. I thought I was a healthy 32 year old male when one night I started feeling sick. A few hours later I went to an urgent care where they told me to go to the ER. I then spent 2 weeks in the hospital with doctors fighting to keep me alive.

Turns out I was born with a kidney disease. Kidneys are really good at compensating for reduced functionality, so i didn't feel anything at all as they failed more and more until, finally, they failed too much and it all came crashing down.

Had I been getting annual check ups they probably would have caught it earlier since standard blood work would have shown something was up. Moral of the story? If you have a history of kidney disease, go get an annual check up!

AbysmalMoose2 karma

So can I ask a question? I'm 32 and was just diagnosed with IgA Nephropathy. I'm in stage 4 but not quite bad enough for a transplant yet. Doc says I have about a 70% chance of needing one in the next 10 years. Since the issue is autoimmune, the donated kidney would eventually be affected as well (unless i can go into remission, which we're working on). So say I get a new kidney and it lasts me 10 years; how many times can someone get a new transplant? Do they eventually just say "you already had two, no more"? Is the first kidney easier to get than the next?

AbysmalMoose2 karma

It really varies by person and pathology. I have a chronic kidney disease and can tell you that, for me, I had pretty much no symptoms that I recognized as odd until I hit late stage 3 failure... and then the dam broke. The problem is the kidneys are pretty good at dealing with declining functionality. Eventually they get overwhelmed, but bless their little kidney hearts, they do their best to hide it.

AbysmalMoose2 karma

Oh man, potassium is a bitch. With all the dietary restrictions, that is the hardest for me. Sodium wasn't too hard to figure out, but potassium seems to be abundant in everything and isn't required on nutritional labels!