Mailbag....

I'd like to take this time to thank all those who've been reading, and those who've left comments.  As I said earlier, if you have questions - feel free to ask, and I'll try to answer them.

Rob asked "Do they know what caused your kidney failure?"

Dear Rob,  "This is a good question.  When I tell people I'm on dialysis, a lot of times they look at me like I was some dirty, drunk miscreant who drank his kidneys out of existence.  Well, that's always a bit offensive - if I was a big, dirty alcoholic bum, my LIVER would have been shot way before my kidneys.   No, my kidney failure is much more of a mystery.  There was so little functional tissue left when they found me, my doctor didn't want to biopsy the kidney to see why.  He surmises that it's either genetic - I was born with the defect and it slowly killed my kidney, or another likely scenario is that I had a staph infection which spread to my kidney, slowly damaging it - raising my blood pressure, which in turn damaged my kidney, and the cycle continued until they were dead.  I was constantly diagnosed with other problems, hypo-thryoidism, sleep apnea, depression, ADHD etc.... and many of those symptoms throughout my life were exacerbated by underlying nephritis.  So, I could have lived life as clean as a preachers sheets and things would have still ended up in a dialysis chair.  So sometimes I don't appreciate the judgment that comes when I tell people I'm on dialysis."

Whew!  Well, that's it for this week - if you have questions, send 'em in!

~Steve