Diary of A Kidney Transplant - Week 2

Before you jump to any conclusions about me, my lifestyle, my habits, eating, my fitness, etc. You can't catch kidney disease through the air, or by touch, or eating or drinking something. Its one of those things that can happen to you out of the blue. Some patients inherit a form of it, most it just happens.

Me. I used to go gym ( I used to be a dancer, long ago). I eat only healthy food, I'm a vegetarian. I've never drank alcohol. I've never smoked. I've never took hard or soft drugs. Ever.

Talking to doctors, they say if  diabetes, high blood pressure or kidney disease is in your family you're more likely to get it. My family was a high blood pressure family, both parents.

To be honest I didn't even know where the kidney was in my own body, let alone what it did. I found out alright. It affects every system in your body in some way, and when they both go down (you can survive easily on one) you definitely know about it.

The kidney is situated towards the lower back,within the abdominal cavity and is responsible for filtering the blood, regulating blood pressure, produces hormones and more importantly via the bladder, excretes urine waste from the body.

Its made up of many nephron cells and the doctors in my case said the new kidney's cells had 'gone to sleep' and need to be woken up one by one.

They also prescribed a revolutionary new process called plasma exchange because there were worries about my body rejecting the new organ. This involved taking my blood, spinning around what seemed and felt like a washing machine for a few hours. This happened many times. Be patient they said.