Sometimes, kidney failure can be shitty - and I don't mean that metaphorically. Oh, how I wish I did. Mostly, my body can hold onto excess fluid with aplomb; I may be a little squishy around the edges but otherwise the extra blubber sits contentedly about my person until the machine sucks it all away. However, on occasion, and for reasons I have yet to determine, my body enters what I like to think of fondly as Excretion Mode. Like a surly teenager or a public sector worker, my body decides it no longer wants to abide by the status quo and starts to expel all that within it which it finds unpleasant. Yesterday was one such occasion, so I spent the morning alternately sleeping and shitting my guts out. I was forced to take the day off work to do this, as my school frowns upon both of these activities on its premises.
I resigned myself long ago to this aspect of kidney failure, one of the less savoury in its repertoire. I can think of more enjoyable ways to spend my time, but I've always held a latent admiration for the way in which my body takes matters into its on hands and will whatever it can to survive. It senses how I have recklessly flooded it with Diet Coke and water (sipped surreptitiously from a water bottle at midnight) and endeavours to do something about it. Essentially, my body does its best to dialyse itself. After all it has been through, in spite of my mutinous kidneys best attempt to derail it, my body continues to look after me as best it can. It does naturally what the dialysis machine does. If only it could do it as well.
I must be the only female in Christendom who doesn't mind getting her period; I don't even begrudge the spot I am currently sporting as a result of my time of the month. I like it when my body aches after exercise and I revel in headaches brought upon by nothing more sinister than too much time spent before my computer screen, for these are all signs that my body is getting on with living whilst all this dialysis malarky continues to rage around it. These are the natural, normal, everyday processes that we all take for granted when we are healthy but are quick to panic about in their absence. For me, they are at such stark odds with the artificiality of the hospital that they become beautiful in their biological simplicity and they prove to me that despite the dialysis, the pills and what-have-you, my body is just a run-of-the mill walking, laughing, pooping, aching, eating machine, just like everyone else's. My body has not been so battered by this condition that it simply succumbs to fluid overload and lets me suffer in my squidgy-ness until dialysis day comes around: it says fuck you instead, and gets rid of the fluid the only way it knows how. It wasn't my body's fault that my kidneys failed; they were bad apples from the start, the black sheep of my anatomy; my and my body hate my kidneys, we're glad they're gone.
If my tale of chronic diarrhoea is not enough to convince of the joy we can all take in the mundane mechanisms of our healthy bodies, I implore you to watch "Love on The Transplant List" which you can currently catch on BBC iPlayer. I was left incredulous at the spirit and determination of Kirstie and her friends and family; trust me, you will never complain about having a cold again.
I resigned myself long ago to this aspect of kidney failure, one of the less savoury in its repertoire. I can think of more enjoyable ways to spend my time, but I've always held a latent admiration for the way in which my body takes matters into its on hands and will whatever it can to survive. It senses how I have recklessly flooded it with Diet Coke and water (sipped surreptitiously from a water bottle at midnight) and endeavours to do something about it. Essentially, my body does its best to dialyse itself. After all it has been through, in spite of my mutinous kidneys best attempt to derail it, my body continues to look after me as best it can. It does naturally what the dialysis machine does. If only it could do it as well.
I must be the only female in Christendom who doesn't mind getting her period; I don't even begrudge the spot I am currently sporting as a result of my time of the month. I like it when my body aches after exercise and I revel in headaches brought upon by nothing more sinister than too much time spent before my computer screen, for these are all signs that my body is getting on with living whilst all this dialysis malarky continues to rage around it. These are the natural, normal, everyday processes that we all take for granted when we are healthy but are quick to panic about in their absence. For me, they are at such stark odds with the artificiality of the hospital that they become beautiful in their biological simplicity and they prove to me that despite the dialysis, the pills and what-have-you, my body is just a run-of-the mill walking, laughing, pooping, aching, eating machine, just like everyone else's. My body has not been so battered by this condition that it simply succumbs to fluid overload and lets me suffer in my squidgy-ness until dialysis day comes around: it says fuck you instead, and gets rid of the fluid the only way it knows how. It wasn't my body's fault that my kidneys failed; they were bad apples from the start, the black sheep of my anatomy; my and my body hate my kidneys, we're glad they're gone.
If my tale of chronic diarrhoea is not enough to convince of the joy we can all take in the mundane mechanisms of our healthy bodies, I implore you to watch "Love on The Transplant List" which you can currently catch on BBC iPlayer. I was left incredulous at the spirit and determination of Kirstie and her friends and family; trust me, you will never complain about having a cold again.
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