chapter 3

Over the next few days, the doctors did more investigations to figure out what had been going on with her. They suspected her recent illness had caused permanent damage to her kidneys.
She’d undergone another uncomfortable procedure under green towels and lying on her front. They’d taken a sample of her kidney tissue and sent it off for analysis. The biopsy result took a day or two to come back, but it was as they’d thought. She’d had glomerulonephritis. This was an illness that had destroyed the tiny glomerulus structures within the kidney. These little structures controlled the filtration system. They helped to control her blood pressure. - that explained her recent headaches.
Now her kidneys had failed, there was little chance of them recovering. All they could do was to monitor her condition and keep her stable, until a suitable donor could be found for a transplant.
Until then, they had to monitor her sodium, potassium, phosphates, calcium, vitamin D, iron, and the amount of red blood cells she had because normal kidneys had a role to play in blood pressure, bone density, red blood cell manufacture, vitamin D and calcium metabolism. If her urea was too high, it would form crystals in her blood stream and make her skin itchy. She was going to have to be careful of how much fluid she had to drink every day. If she drank too much, it might pool as oedema in her legs, or even worse, in her lungs.
The new information that Jane was being bombarded with was difficult to take in. There was so much of it. It scared her. If she did the wrong thing, her life could be in danger. She was only 32! She wasn’t ready to die yet!

After a week or so, Jane’s condition stabilised. She had her blood taken every day and the doctors reviewed her results everyday. At present, they wanted to hold her off haemodialysis as long as it was safe to do so in order to maintain any residual kidney function that she had. If they dialysed her regularly, her kidneys would realised that something was doing their job for them and would stop working altogether.

She was advised to avoid high potassium foods, especially when they were trying to avoid dialysing her. She was put on a ‘renal’ diet and could order just about anything on the special blue menu she got to fill in. She was not allowed coffee or chocolate or hot chocolate, or fresh fruit juice. All she could drink was tea or orange cordial diluted. She could not eat fresh fruit, especially bananas. All the vegetables she ate had to be boiled until all the goodness had come out of them. She could have chips, but the potatoes had to be par boiled before they were fried. She was not allowed to eat hard cheese as it contained high levels of phosphate. She could have cream cheese or cottage cheese though. She could not have crisps from the shop downstairs either. It was certainly not a diet for healthy eating. How could she possibly get any goodness out of her food when it was cooked to a pulp and looked so unappealing?