In my lame attempt to turn this blog into a mildly amusing and coherent book, I have been forced to spend a considerable amount of time combing back over the events of the last couple of years. In truth, I find reflecting dull and arduous, but if I will insist on trying to write pithy, urbane anecdotes about my current situation, I should really provide some linear explanation as to how I got here in the first place.
This is not my first brush with kidney failure. This first bout hit me like a tsunami (too soon? really? even now?) when I was nine and the (mercifully) truncated version is that after eighteen months of dialysis, my mother generously offered up a kidney, which worked wonderfully for ten years. I started dialysis for the second time in January 2008, but the kidney had begun to fail before that.
I was chatting with Gerodie Mark the other night about the Durahm Bubble. For those souls who did not attend Durham University, the idea of the Durham Bubble (or "Dubble" as I have wittily "dubbed" it) will not have as much resonance, but I am certain it is a notion common to every university throughout the country. Whilst we were at uni, we felt cushioned and protected inside the Bubble. Durham was especially insular because the city is so small and the... ethos, shall we say... is quite overpowering. It was as though we were all shielded from the horrors of the outside world as long as we huddled behind the Durham coat of arms. Divorce, mortgages, illness... these were all things to grown-ups, in the real world! The Dubble, in addition to the high levels of alcohol in our blood streams at pretty much all times, made us feel invincible.
Perhaps it was for this reason that as soon as we left the soft, cuddly confines of uni, a lot of my peers seemed to be buffeted by worrisome circumstance. Suddenly, we were stressed: we couldn't find jobs and money was tight; there were loans and rents and bills to be paid; serious relationships were being formed and flunked - real hearts were being broken. Amongst all this woe, we were getting ill. I am by no means the only one of my friends to have rocked by serious illness since we left uni. Except in my case, the illness was already dug in and drinking tea long before I was shaking Bill Bryson's hand.
Going back to the beginning has made me realise I wasn't healthy in my last term at university, but man, was I in denial. I didn't have the time or inclination to be ill, because there was simply too much fun to be had. But there were symptoms and, if I had chosen to, I would have recognised the illness grinning at me menacingly. In short, I chose not to. I explained away the huge bruise that bloomed plum and inky blue across the entirety of the back of my left thigh as the result of a "knock" after a boozy night in Loveshack (one of Durham's fine drinking establishments and a very easy place to...er...get knocked). The almost debilitating, constant lethargy I experienced...well, you find a student who doesn't consider 3 - 5 pm as nap time. I was, after all, living on a diet of pizza, tomato soup and cigarettes - not exactly athletic fodder. Later on, when I had left Durham and was living in London, I still managed to find excuses for the dizziness, the malaise and the headaches. Even in the final few weeks, when I began a three day bender of vomiting and diarrhoea (often simultaneously which provided some logistical problems) I simply put it down to a nasty stomach bug.
At this point, my subconscious was doing cartwheels, taking its clothes off, lighting fires - anything it could think of to try and make my conscious mind take notice of what was going on, but I was stubborn and resistant. The descent into renal failure for the second time was my own Vietnam; it was truly the thing I dreaded most in the whole world. Denying it was happening was not so much a coping mechanism as much as a survival one; I honestly think the first time I admitted to myself that my kidney was failing was when my doctor told me I needed to have it removed.
It does not upset me to re-hash these events of yester-year. I have made my peace with them; it was a very difficult and traumatic time, of course, but it happened and I survived. It seems to me, the only sane thing to do now is try and make light of it. This condition struck me randomly, for no discernible reason, so there is nothing I could have done to change the course my life followed as a result. What's done is done and I find myself impatient whilst having to recount it, but recount it I must... if only for the sake of the word-count.
This is not my first brush with kidney failure. This first bout hit me like a tsunami (too soon? really? even now?) when I was nine and the (mercifully) truncated version is that after eighteen months of dialysis, my mother generously offered up a kidney, which worked wonderfully for ten years. I started dialysis for the second time in January 2008, but the kidney had begun to fail before that.
I was chatting with Gerodie Mark the other night about the Durahm Bubble. For those souls who did not attend Durham University, the idea of the Durham Bubble (or "Dubble" as I have wittily "dubbed" it) will not have as much resonance, but I am certain it is a notion common to every university throughout the country. Whilst we were at uni, we felt cushioned and protected inside the Bubble. Durham was especially insular because the city is so small and the... ethos, shall we say... is quite overpowering. It was as though we were all shielded from the horrors of the outside world as long as we huddled behind the Durham coat of arms. Divorce, mortgages, illness... these were all things to grown-ups, in the real world! The Dubble, in addition to the high levels of alcohol in our blood streams at pretty much all times, made us feel invincible.
Perhaps it was for this reason that as soon as we left the soft, cuddly confines of uni, a lot of my peers seemed to be buffeted by worrisome circumstance. Suddenly, we were stressed: we couldn't find jobs and money was tight; there were loans and rents and bills to be paid; serious relationships were being formed and flunked - real hearts were being broken. Amongst all this woe, we were getting ill. I am by no means the only one of my friends to have rocked by serious illness since we left uni. Except in my case, the illness was already dug in and drinking tea long before I was shaking Bill Bryson's hand.
Going back to the beginning has made me realise I wasn't healthy in my last term at university, but man, was I in denial. I didn't have the time or inclination to be ill, because there was simply too much fun to be had. But there were symptoms and, if I had chosen to, I would have recognised the illness grinning at me menacingly. In short, I chose not to. I explained away the huge bruise that bloomed plum and inky blue across the entirety of the back of my left thigh as the result of a "knock" after a boozy night in Loveshack (one of Durham's fine drinking establishments and a very easy place to...er...get knocked). The almost debilitating, constant lethargy I experienced...well, you find a student who doesn't consider 3 - 5 pm as nap time. I was, after all, living on a diet of pizza, tomato soup and cigarettes - not exactly athletic fodder. Later on, when I had left Durham and was living in London, I still managed to find excuses for the dizziness, the malaise and the headaches. Even in the final few weeks, when I began a three day bender of vomiting and diarrhoea (often simultaneously which provided some logistical problems) I simply put it down to a nasty stomach bug.
At this point, my subconscious was doing cartwheels, taking its clothes off, lighting fires - anything it could think of to try and make my conscious mind take notice of what was going on, but I was stubborn and resistant. The descent into renal failure for the second time was my own Vietnam; it was truly the thing I dreaded most in the whole world. Denying it was happening was not so much a coping mechanism as much as a survival one; I honestly think the first time I admitted to myself that my kidney was failing was when my doctor told me I needed to have it removed.
It does not upset me to re-hash these events of yester-year. I have made my peace with them; it was a very difficult and traumatic time, of course, but it happened and I survived. It seems to me, the only sane thing to do now is try and make light of it. This condition struck me randomly, for no discernible reason, so there is nothing I could have done to change the course my life followed as a result. What's done is done and I find myself impatient whilst having to recount it, but recount it I must... if only for the sake of the word-count.
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