Share Your Story and Help Someone Today
TKF is sharing stories about how dialysis patients, transplant recipients, living kidney donors, and CKD patients learned they had kidney disease and how their lives have changed as a result. If you would like to share a story about your journey, please contact us today.
Kerry Long, a US Renal Care Social Worker covering McMinnville and Manchester clinics, shares a story from one of her clinic patients.
Q: How did you find out about your kidney disease?
A: Back in 2015, I was not at my best. I thought I was going through the “change of life.” I was always having headaches and throwing up. One day I woke up feeling so badly that my husband told me we were going to the hospital. I got tested and was told that my kidneys were failing. They rushed me in an ambulance to Vanderbilt. By the time all the testing was done, I was told I had cancer and stage 5 kidney disease. The one thing I told myself was, “You will fight, and you will win”.
Q: We assume that adjusting to an ESRD diagnosis can be challenging. What was your turning point? When and how did you become empowered to take charge of you ESRD diagnosis and care?
A: When I was told about how I was going to start dialysis it scared me to death. And having to get (access placed) was scary. But once it was all done, and I learned how to do things, my life changed. That is when I told myself, “I can do this; I can be strong and fight cancer and do chemo and make it through this”. I say with love, faith, hope, and believing in yourself you can make it through. But I am most empowered by my children and their love.