Growing up I wanted to be just like my dad. He was big, strong, athletic, one hundred percent cantankerous in a way that he didn't lose charm, but most importantly he was a man's man. Full of grit, tough as nails, whatever cliché you can think of that equates to punching life in the face when it gets hard, that was my dad. I started mimicking his traits early, especially through sports. I was never the biggest, strongest, fastest, but I had plenty of screws loose and I loved sacrificing my body to make a play. Injuries and the sight of blood were almost like badges of honor, it let me know I was doing everything I possibly could to play and compete to the best of my ability. Unfortunately this carried over into my mentality and overall health, which would end up being the most valuable lesson I've learned as an adult. I've never wanted to be anything more than the person that can take the most punishment and continue to move forward, but this time I might have let my ego steer the ship a little more than it should be allowed to.
For one solid week, I would consider myself lucky if on any of those seven nights I got just one hour of sleep. The pain in my back would slowly roll in as the sun went down and continue to grow with what felt like every beat of my heart. I could feel the blood pumping into back, thud-thud...thud-thud...A few months prior to this very moment I had a kidney biopsy revealing what's called "Berger's Disease". It's an autoimmune disorder that essentially clogs your kidneys when you become sick from a common cold to the flu and everything between. When I had the biopsy done, I prided myself on the fact that I did it without the use of painkillers or drugs. Partially because I am afraid of drugs, but mostly because I believed it would serve as a test to see where my pain threshold was and present another opportunity to display toughness. With the biopsy I won, I beat the pain; but this week long battle with agony had my number, I had no idea how bad it would actually get.
The first sign of things going south with my body was urinating. Every time I would go to the bathroom to void my bladder it would produce nothing but blood. The toilet would fill and my knees would become weak, the sight alone was enough to make me a little anxious. I had seen this before with my previous episodes, but for some reason I could tell this time was different. It lasted too long and no matter how much fluid I tried to choke down, I just couldn't get the pain or blood to go away. Second came my inability to sleep. The pain for some reason seemed nocturnal, it would rear its ugly head just as I would lay mine to rest. There was no comfortable position, or way to avoid what felt like someone twisting knives into the flanks of my back. Finally came my inability to eat. I would later learn that the reason I couldn't keep anything down and that I lost my appetite was because my kidneys were so swollen they were pushing on my other organs, making it pretty terrible to put things inside my stomach. This was my first week of a month being sick and for some reason I "knew" I could tough it out, I "knew" it was going to be "fine".
I was pretty miserable sitting in my room and exhausting my "Netflix" and "Amazon Prime" accounts. I had watched everything I could ever want to and I honestly had no energy to do anything else. I figured at least going to someone's house and doing the exact same thing with a friend in the room would make me feel better. There was a fight card that Saturday. As tradition is written, I headed to my friend Garin's house to watch the bloodshed and nerd-out on fighting for the entire four hours of carnage. My visit fell flat; I was worn out, in pain, and just the worst company ever. I was in too much pain to drive home so Joey and Garin rolled out the air mattress and the pursuit for an ounce of rest began. It was ill fated and around two thirty Sunday morning when I decided to use the restroom, the pain brought me to my knees. I knew I'd lost the battle, it was time to go to the hospital.
Garin and Joey drove me to the hospital no questions asked, total badasses. Upon my arrival the doctors ran some tests and handed me some pain meds. Sleep at last graced me with its presence. The doc walked in and said a bunch of doctor things, but what stuck out was "your Creatinine level is at 7.8 so you will be admitted and see a specialist when they arrive". Based on previous knowledge I knew that kidney failure roughly starts when your Creatinine is at 2.0 so I was worried, but yet again I "knew" that everything was going to be "fine". A call to my parents had them promptly at the hospital inside the time frame of a couple hours. I was happy surrounded by people that cared about me, but admittedly it made me feel weak. I was extremely disappointed in myself for relying so heavily on other people, for rides, support, whatever. This was the first blow to my ego of tough. I couldn't do this on my own and that made me feel beyond pathetic.
