March is kidney health month

March is Kidney Health month, and April 22-30, is Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week. By donating your organs you can save eight lives and enhance up to 75 more.

I’m a 29-year-old and have suffered with kidney disease since I was in elementary school. I’ve been on dialysis over 10 years and am on Saskatchewan’s home hemodialysis program. I have dialysis treatments five days a week, with no consecutive days off. I am waiting for a kidney transplant, and now I might need a liver transplant, too.

Kidney disease affects your whole life. It restricts your diet and fluid intake, forces you take medications, saps your energy and causes you to begin dialysis. Your kidneys won’t function enough to clean toxins from your body or remove fluid and you are slowly being poisoned to death. Without dialysis the average patient would die in a week.

Saskatchewan has some of the lowest organ donor rates in the country, but we are a caring and giving province. We raise millions of dollars every year for Telemiracle and recently broke a record at a bone marrow donor drive.

Even if you sign your organ donor card and put the sticker on your licence your family can overrule your decision to be an organ donor. Please talk to your family about this important decision now, so that they know your wishes to donate. If we try we can become a leader in organ donation.

Bridget Kurysh, Humboldt