Diagnosis came frustratingly late
Grant first realised something was wrong when he began feeling tired all the time. He says: “I was really drained of energy, and had gone from being active, playing football and going swimming, to, all of a sudden, getting tired just coming home from doing the food shopping.”
“I went to the doctors, but it was frustrating to begin with as they told me nothing was wrong. It was two or three visits before they decided to ask for a urine sample, and when they had the results, they saw that my kidney function wasn’t what they expected it to be.”
A subsequent scan revealed that Grant had been living with one kidney since birth, without anyone ever realising. He says: “It felt like a big unknown to me. I take blood pressure tablets and have appointments to ease the strain on my kidney and protect its function. The doctors can’t give me a cause for the decline though, because they can’t perform biopsies on people with only one kidney.”
“It was frustrating having to insist to the doctors that something was wrong, and then still not knowing what had caused it. I had so many questions and wondered if I did something wrong to kick-start it. It’s only recently that my partner and I have started adjusting our diet. We don’t cook with salt anymore and have started doing more exercise. I feel like I could have done this way before my thirties if I’d known about it sooner.”
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- Source: https://www.kidneyresearchuk.org/2024/02/23/if-i-can-walk-the-march-march-with-one-kidney-you-can-too/