[Magdalen] A prayer, please

[thedonboyd at austin.rr.com]

Hello Arthur Laurent:  I am a 78-year-old man who has lived with only one kidney since birth.  No nephritic problems so far.  (Okay, some bladder problems intermittently, and I've had to use a catheter to urinate for the last 40 years (+/-) but that's bladder, not kidney.  (Not to worry, putting in the catheter doesn't hurt a bit after the first 200 or so times.)  I am assured that one kidney functioning normally is sufficient; the second is a fail-safe.
There was a time early in my life when our rural doctor restricted my fluid intake (didn't want to risk overtaxing the system, he said) but more knowledgeable physicians later overruled him.

In middle age I developed, as so many do, high blood pressure which was treated aggressively and has been well controlled on medication for lo! these many years.

My purpose in sharing this bit of history is to provide you a single example (for what it may be worth) that the absence of one kidney isn't in and of itself necessarily a cause for alarm.

I hope your physicians are able to identify a cause for the abnormal lab values and to assure you that you can go forward doing as you have been doing (without knowing that you were lacking a kidney).

AND--welcome to the Pub.  You will find a variety of people here, mostly nice (actually, we work at maintaining civility, some of us having migrated here from other mostly-Anglican forums where disagreements were expressed more with more self-certainty and stridency than we wished to tolerate).

Don in Austin (TX)
---- Arthur Laurent <ALaurent at npr.org> wrote: 
> Latest blood work brought a value that was a bit high for my PCP (though it's been bouncing around those high normal numbers for five or so years). So off to the nephrologist I went.
> 
> He ordered a bunch of tests. In the first test (about 45 minutes into a renal sonogram beginning at 7 this morning), the resident asked me, "Has anyone ever told you you don't have a right kidney?"  I laughed, because it reminded me of the time my cardiologist asked, "Has anyone ever told you you have atrial fibrillation?
> 
> (Why would anyone other than a specialist tell you information like that?)
> 
> Funny I hadn't known that. I was in the Service for 7 years, and nobody ever mentioned a missing kidney to me. I would have thought Navy doctors would have been more thorough.
> 
> It freaked me out, (maybe it was the dark lights and the cold slimy gel...) though I'm a lot more calm now. Since I've apparently never had a right kidney, I'll refine what I'm doing/eating now to minimize stress of my kidney. And I suppose I shouldn't expect to live more than another 61 years.
> 
> Please pray for my calm acceptance of this, or whatever else the Spirit might prompt you to pray for. Presumably if God wants me healed, He'll do it. I'll settle for just being calm accepting about it.
> 
> Thanks for all prayers and good thoughts.
> 
> (An exciting first post, no? Ha Ha Ha)
> 
> Arthur