Do you have high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, or a family history of kidney disease? If you do, there may be a silent killer lurking within your body, and only a blood test might be the only way you can know for sure if you suffer from Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD).
Roshanda Turner, a single mother of two amazing girls shared her unfortunate and terrifying experience she had with her kidneys. A routine trip to the grocery store turned into a horrendous emergency room visit that she would never forget.
Roshanda was 35-years old at the time and pregnant with her second daughter when the doctor discovered protein in her urine after her urinalysis screening.
Roshanda said the physician informed her the results signaled that something unusual was happening with her kidneys. She was also educated that since she was pregnant and the protein wasn’t coming from the baby there was nothing that could be done until after she delivered her child.
“So, when I was pregnant is basically when I discovered something was wrong with my kidneys. I was going through that process of pregnancy when they did that 24-hour urinalysis. They send you home and tell you to complete this test and bring it back…When they called me back to go over the labs, they told me I had protein in my urine. And I didn’t know what that meant; [but] I heard that term once before when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter who is now 23. And at that time, they told me just as long as the protein wasn’t coming from the baby everything was fine. So that is how that went away 20 years prior,” said Roshanda.
Roshanda said the doctors told her, “You can’t do anything now- you’re pregnant. But once you deliver your daughter, you should go ahead and get that checked.”
Approximately six to eight months after Roshanda successfully gave birth to her healthy daughter, she said she didn’t go to the nephrologist right away. “I felt fine. So, It wasn’t until six to eight months later that [while] I was grocery shopping and [felt as if] couldn’t do my regular routine.” She noticed she couldn’t catch her breath and started feeling dizzy. “I couldn’t make it around the store and I said something is wrong and I went to the ER [because] I just didn’t know what else to do. I just knew I wasn’t okay.”
She immediately sought treatment at the emergency room and was told she was experiencing Chronic Kidney Disease and needed to follow up with a nephrologist immediately. During her hospital stay, Ms. Turner was given a blood transfusion because her condition had progressed to a dangerous level of no return.
WHAT IS CHRONIC KIDNEY DISEASE (CKD)?
Roshanda described kidney failure as similar to a teabag. “Basically, Chronic Kidney Disease is when your kidneys stop functioning. They are like a filter. So, when you think of them like a teabag, everything kind of runs through them and helps clean and balance your system. And over time, Chronic Kidney Disease starts to take that process away. So, your body is no longer able to clean and filter the way it’s supposed to… And it goes into five stages before your renal failure.”
Some of the risk factors for developing kidney disease are having diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, or a family history of kidney failure. Roshanda explained she didn’t seek a second opinion about her kidneys after her ER visit.
“That was my mistake. The thing about kidney disease or kidney failure is it can be really silent. Sometimes there are no symptoms, there are no signs and then the symptoms that you do experience are what we normally have like fatigue. So, who’s not tired or exhausted, I just had a baby and I wrote that off. Frequent urination, I didn’t think anything of it. I wasn’t diabetic. So maybe I’m drinking too much fluid. So, there were all these things that were signs that I didn’t know were signs [and] I wasn’t paying them any attention. I thought it was just me being run down but it was so much more than that,” she said.