Do You Know The Stages Of Chronic Kidney Disease?

My youngest son, father, and mother all have chronic kidney disease. My mother just left us a few months ago but was not kidney related. Over the years, I have been to many doctor appointments with all of them. I wanted to know what stages they had to endure. So, I talked to the doctors and the patient about the stages.

I found out that kidney conditions grow silently and over the years. One day you just find out you have CKD damage. One doctor I spoke to was explaining what functions kidneys perform for our body and how it works. So, I had to learn how kidneys work and the different parts that help clean our bloodstream.

What is eGFR?

The next thing that was highlighted was this short abbreviation that was mentioned everywhere. I felt like it has to do a lot with distinguishing kidney health and that was “eGFR”. So of course, one of my questions was what is eGFR?  So, she explained it to me.

We all know kidneys clean our bodies of waste materials. There is a way to find out if it is not doing that very efficiently. That is what eGFR tells us. This tells us that the kidneys are working to clean and as its score goes higher, kidney disease advances in its stages. So, as it starts growing higher than 90% kidney stage is set for stage 1, and then it keeps on going to stage 5, where things are not so helpful and become out of hand at some point.

My doctor told me that as our body loses its ability to clean the bloodstream, it starts accumulating and pressure increase on our kidney to work more. We slowly lose our kidney function if not getting it treated timely. Because in the initial stages, it is possible to reverse the damage. But later on, it gets chronic and can only be managed by different treatments like dialysis or transplant.

Our kidneys do so much for our bodies

When I left the office that day, I was flooded with this information and how lightly we take our body organ’s health. Our kidneys are doing all the hard work without us even knowing about it. I will be honest here. I never knew that kidneys do so much for our bodies and how sensitive they are to be taken very seriously.

Since I am diabetic myself, I was already being cautioned about the importance of taking care of myself and not smoking, and cutting back on salt.

It's important to educate ourselves about CKD!

So, my suggestion is next time your doctor says something that needs extra care, just do it. But more than that, read about it and ask questions about it to your health care professional. Unless we are fully aware of what we are facing, we will not be able to fight it.

My son knows that he can pick himself up no matter what. He does this with a smile on his face, a positive attitude, and the determination to keep trying and never give up. Stay healthy my friends and take extra care of those little beans in your body who have a lot on their plate.