Why Do People Treat You Differently With CKD?

I was talking to my son the other day and he said that there are days that he doesn’t even know who he is. The sad truth is that most people treat him like that too. They act like they don’t know him.

He has always been this strong confident man who had it going on. A family man with a wife and three beautiful children. Has a good job and a new home. I raised him to be strong and put on a “show”. When he got sick, he continued to do that. Everyone was shut out except his mom and doctors. He couldn’t take people looking at him as if he had 3 heads. The good thing was that he was a supervisor on his job, so he was able to go into his office and shut the door.

His routine is the same each day

His routine is pretty much the same. He takes dialysis every day for 8 hours a day at home. This was an option he chose so that he could keep his job. Most days he only has enough energy to wash a few dishes and lie down.

He used to have lots of family and friends who would come by to visit often. They all got depressed because they thought he would be hooked up to a machine when they would come to visit. Phone calls have become fewer and fewer.

The thing that hurts the most is that people he went to school with avoid eye contact with him anymore. They are all in their 40s and I guess they don’t want to think that this could possibly happen to them. He does everything he can to live a long healthy life. Sorry, so many of his peers don’t understand this.

CKD can be hard for people to understand

Sometimes, he believes his wife blames him for being sick and it’s his fault. She believes that on the days he said he wasn’t feeling well he should have gone to the doctor. Or why did he put so much salt in his food and not take better care of himself?

People have told him that he drains them if they come around. They don’t understand what doing dialysis 7 days a week can do to you. He tries and hides how he feels most days because he doesn’t want to bother people.

There are days that co-workers ask him how he’s doing and how he’s handling everything. He knows they are pitying him, and just want to get out of this conversation. Most of the time he usually says I’m good, on my way to another meeting. It’s hard for them and in their mind, they are saying, “I’m glad this is not me.”

We are so strong

People have talked amongst themselves, and he has heard on many occasions that he should be home. They had him believing this himself at one point, should he just lay in bed all day, suck up the government money and feel sorry for himself?

He decided that no, this is not who he is and I’m not going to do that. Of course, we don’t know what the future holds, but for right now he will continue to do his dialysis 7 days a week and live his life until there’s no more living.

We all know this is not easy, but one thing is for sure we are much stronger than most give us credit for. When people try and make him think he’s less than a man, he just looks at where he was before this and how far he has come. Control your illness and not let it take over your life.