Kidney failure: Out of the Blue

It is Monday morning. I spent most of last week in the Cardiac Care Unit of St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids. Last Monday, I was under the weather, but not feeling too bad at all. But then Tuesday. I felt awful and Miejse (my wife) took me to my doctor. My blood pressure was about 250 over 140. I have never seen numbers anything close to that. We immediately went to a cardiologist, who immediately got me checked into the CCU.

For the first day, all efforts were to get my blood pressure under control. Mostly via drugs from the cardiologist. I have to say that I really appreciate the nurses in that unit. Those days are now something of a blur, but they were always attentive and professional.

As the examinations continued, it became pretty clear that my heart was in pretty good shape. Cholesterol levels could have been lower, but the arteries were clear. I'm 49 and generally pretty fit. What was emerging was kidney failure.

Kidneys!? Something that I had always taken for granted. One of those 'little organs' that basically just work. Nephrology was nothing more than a word for games like Trivial Pursuits. I don't even know the basic structure of the kidney. Its purpose, vaguely like the liver, is to remove toxins from the body. Within days, I had two rounds of dialysis. The first time, 2 liters were removed. The second time was a more aggressive 5 liters. How important is it to get this started ASAP? In A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Early versus Late Initiation of Dialysis, it doesn't seem that faster is better, so waiting an extra day should not be an issue.

So for now, I am entering a new medical realm that I have never really heard of. So move over cardiologists, my new medical expert is my Nephrologist named Abna Saxena. She is a quiet woman of Indian descent. Like the nurses here, she seems both kind and professional. Luckily for me, I see that she had a Fellowship at Brown University. At this point, I'm for any elitism that helps my cause. Next, I want to do some reading about the kidneys, their structure and their function. Perhaps someday soon, the phrase "glomerular filtration rate" will makes sense to me. For now, its just one of the strange words in my new world. So I am off to Wikipedia to learn.