By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
Now I realized to keep showing up is a good strategy in life. In the end you will somehow be a winner. Even in bad times, you just have to muster enough energy to show up. To show up in your workplace, in school or to an appointment with a creditor who was coming to call on your loan or obligation.
In the biggest battle yet for my health starting two and a half months ago, things were scary but I had to show up and one thing led to another.
A series of events got me into a place with no choice but to come up with enough energy and courage to face things. It started with a supposed routine medical consultation at around 5 p.m. But my cardiologist ordered me to be confined. No time to go home. Just a chance to call up my wife to pick me up and go for confinement at any hospital of my choice. I told her, BGHMC was it. She then called the emergency section to expect me any minute.
She called also my other doctor, a kidney specialist, to call and pull strings for the things to be done to me. Then on we rushed. After the admission procedures and medical preliminaries, I was scheduled for an operation on the jugular to establish an access to my blood for dialysis purposes. A surgeon had to be found. That done, the operation happened at midnight as my dialysis was to commence by daylight.
Due to the call of my cardiologist, a semi private room was reserved for us. A private room would have been best but none was available. With the steady hand of a young, busy and might have been drowsy surgeon the operation was successful.
Next morning, I was wheeled into the dialysis room. My first time ever. Why the rush? To save my kidneys. That time my creatinine level was above 1000 by about a hundred.
Now, I have been on dialysis for more than two months, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. I just had to keep showing up.
It is easy to narrate these things, but the run up to my confinement was anything but. We were anxious and afraid. Will I be on dialysis forever? Somehow though, as we went through the hospital hustle and bustle I became positive there will be a life whatever happened. It will be different but a life nonetheless. And at the back of my mind there might be a chance of graduating from the dialysis requirement. This was possible if my kidneys were not so dead already. They would have the chance to be nursed to become well enough so they could recuperate.
On my side I would just have to keep showing up to face the situation and go through the processes required.
By the way, creatinine is the dirt or waste resulting from metabolic processes of the body. This finds its way to the kidneys where they would be filtered and excreted as urine. If the kidneys can’t do that job, then dialysis has to be done to cleanse the blood. Otherwise, death.
When we rushed to the hospital, my creatinine level was at a critical point. It had to be lowered by dialysis where a machine does the function of the kidneys—cleansing the blood of wastes.
The only way to nurse the kidneys back to health is to eat the right kinds of food, to be aided by medicines and other medical processes. The right foods are choice vegetables. A lot of vegetables are prohibited though if one’s kidney disease is in an advanced stage like what I had.
There is also the problem about salt, sugar and cooking vegetable oil. Only very slight if at all. Without these, food can be so tasteless. The first few days, I vomited in an effort to swallow the veggies which my tummy was rejecting. My water or liquid intake was also limited to four glasses a day.
After a few days of eating the small amounts I could force down my throat, I became just a bag of skin and bones. And so weak. It was hell. But then again, I had to cling to life. Eating more was the key.
Luckily, my wife, who has the genes of a chef, found ways to imbue the veggie dishes with some taste. She even had to order from out-of-town plant-based meat, without the undesirable seasonings. I could not even use soy sauce, sili and other condiments. Sour stuff like calamansi were also a no-no. Nevertheless, I always showed up at the dining table every day to gobble up food.
Because of the discipline and determination for almost three months, my creatinine was slowly reduced. Its level became 700 then 600 then 500 and yesterday it was 418. Quite phenomenal. At that level, usually patients are not required to go on dialysis. So now, I have to talk to my doctor about reducing my dialysis sessions, or even do away with it altogether. Well, it might take some lowering further of my creatinine level. That would mean the need of more improvement of the condition of the kidneys.**
