‘Don’t ignore symptoms’
As far as Gerald White knew, he was a good athlete and as healthy as could be.
Although a test showed White had excessive protein in his urine, a sure sign of potential kidney problems, and a subsequent kidney biopsy determined that his organ’s filtering system was out of whack, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst cleared him to play football.
“I was in great shape,” he recalled “I had no visible symptoms. I felt good.”
In hindsight, White now says, he was in denial, and explains in part why he didn’t take seriously the warning signs of other potentially deadly diseases. A few years after college, White was diagnosed with high blood pressure. That chronic condition had the double effect of debilitating his already deteriorating kidneys.
But instead of taking medicine aimed at fighting hypertension, White never renewed his first prescription.
“I thought my pressure was under control,” he explained. “I really felt healthy.”
The signs kept coming. A series of little strokes left him temporarily paralyzed, but still, no sense of panic.
It wasn’t until his sister-in-law, a physician, visited him one day and saw that he was having another stroke. It was off to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where it was learned that his kidney function was less than 10 percent.
White finally surrendered.
“Now they had me,” he said.
It was 1990 and he was 27 years old, with still no visible symptoms of kidney disease.
He was on dialysis for about a year before he received his first kidney transplant. His body immediately rejected the new kidney, leaving him in the hospital for two months and landing back on dialysis.
On Dec. 26, 1997, he received his second transplant. Again, his body rejected it, and he was in the hospital for over a month. Again, the high doses of medicines did not work. A third transplant occurred in 2006 and, so far, so good.
He lives what he calls a fairly normal life. He is 44 years old now and works as a corporate recruiter, gets regular exercise and follows what he calls a very conservative diet.
Since he now has a functioning kidney, he does not have to limit his phosphorus and potassium as much as before, but he does watch his intake of fluids.
He is an advocate of the National Kidney Foundation and has participated in several walks to raise awareness of the disease. He has missed the last two walks because of his illness, but intends to walk in the spring.
“Don’t ignore symptoms,” he said. “As kidney disease progresses, symptoms get worse, like burning sensation while urinating; going all the time, especially at night; blood in the urine. Don’t ignore it.”
He also urged everyone to “establish a better relationship” with their doctors.
“Education is the best protection,” he said. “You won’t know until you ask …and you want to have trust in what your doctor is telling you.”
There is a bit of good news in the fight against chronic kidney disease. It can be halted or slowed with a regimen of screening, adherence to medications, close monitoring by your doctor and lifestyle changes — healthy eating, weight loss and exercise.
It is essential to keep high blood pressure and diabetes under control. Particular attention must be focused on the factors that increase the risk of heart disease, because cardiovascular disease and kidney failure are closely related.
If you are at risk for CKD, reliable screening is available. A test called serum creatinine looks for waste products in the blood, while the albuminuria test looks for protein in the urine — both indicators of damaged kidneys. A glomerular filtration rate (GFR) determines how sufficiently the kidneys are functioning.
As White points out, people of color need to be especially careful and vigilant.
He was 15 when he was first diagnosed as having excessive amounts of protein in his urine.
The doctor never offered a complete explanation of this finding, and did not refer him to a nephrologist, a kidney specialist.
“I didn’t know there were any major problems,” he said.
But as White painfully learned, “If you discover kidney disease too late, dialysis is not too far off.” |
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After two failed attempts, Gerald White received a successful third kidney transplant two years ago.
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