There is a difference between “chronic” diseases and diseases that are fatal. Many diseases that were once a death sentence like diabetes and HIV/AIDS, are now controllable with the proper medications. Even the two big killers, heart disease and cancer, can be controlled in some cases. But some chronic diseases can kill you just as quickly as the fatal ones if you don’t take them seriously.
Diabetes and high blood pressure are two good examples. Both can be controlled with proper lifestyle adjustments and medication, but both can also do you in real quick if you ignore them. Another condition that falls into the same category and can be caused by the above mentioned is kidney disease.
There’s kind of a double whammy involved here. Taking a lax attitude toward your diabetes and high blood pressure can cause your kidneys to eventually fail and then the only options are either dialysis or a kidney transplant.
But now doctors are concerned that even when a patient is diagnosed with the early stages of kidney disease, they take a laissez faire attitude toward it.
According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, this was recently driven home by a comment made by a patient to a nephrologist at Mount Sinai Hospital. After the doctor explained kidney disease and the course of treatment in great detail, the patient had a bored look on his face and replied: “Kidney disease, yada, yada, yada.” Some people think that it’s not a big deal.
Kidney disease is treatable in the early stages. By keeping tight control on diabetes and hypertension (the two biggest causes of kidney failure) and taking ACE inhibitors, you can significantly increase the time before kidney failure or even prevent it altogether. If you don’t take it seriously, you WILL end up on dialysis.
Dialysis is a radical and debilitating procedure that is necessary to save lives. And it’s not without drawbacks. First, it removes just enough waste and fluid from your system to keep you alive, but you will still have problems. The weight gain between treatments puts a strain on your heart and you will probably develop anemia that will be serious enough to kill you. Heart complications from anemia is the number one cause of death in kidney dialysis patients.
Also, if you are on dialysis you will either be hooked up to a machine 3x a week or have to do the peritoneal treatments at home. You will be tired all the time and also have to eat a very restricted diet that is low in potassium and phosphorous. Eat too much potassium and it can stop your heart, too much phosphorous and it will draw so much calcium out of your bones that they will start breaking without any reason.
Since so many patients with early stage kidney disease take such a casual attitude, doctors are increasing their efforts to enlighten their patients. One of the problems is that Medicare pays to educate patients with advanced kidney disease, but not those in the early stages.
And the sad truth is that a lot of patients know more about how their car works than their own body. Some are incapable of understanding their condition no matter how carefully it is explained to them.
Most people who have early stage kidney disease don’t even know that they have it. According to the Post: “In a study published in March in The American Journal of Kidney Disease, a research team at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville uncovered serious knowledge gaps among 401 patients with various stages of the disease.”
A simple urine test can determine if you are in the early stages of kidney disease. Get tested and then learn as much as you can about it. If you can’t understand it, then maybe a relative can. It will probably save your life.
Source: http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/health/jane-brody/article_2e75ccc8-a0b9-5c6a-b4c6-a242eed83a3d.html