A good friend who also happens to be a co-worker suffered the unthinkable this week.
It's a long story of suffering. Her son, 38 years old, has had kidney stones. Not just one or two, but dozens, maybe hundreds. We don't think of kidney stones as anything more than an extremely painful nuisance, but he needed repeated procedures to remove stones, to break up stones, and to recover from stones. One kidney had over 40 stones at one time, and the decision was made to remove that kidney. We all know that you only need one good kidney to survive, right?
What we all also know, and don't like to contemplate, is that surgery is a BIG deal. Big.
He came home from the hospital. He coded. Mom did CPR. He arrived at the hospital with a heartbeat, but he did not survive.
I have no idea what went wrong, but I have the list: Blood clots, delayed medication reactions, infection - to name a very few.
It doesn't matter. What matters is that another family is suffering because they lost a young loved one to kidney disease. Mothers should never have to bury their sons. Never.
March is National Kidney Month. Sign your organ donor cards. Tell your family. And consider donating for research: http://www.kidney.org/
DeeDee
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