A lesson from the trail.

What was the cause of my kidney failure? Lets take a step back in time. In 2008 at the young age of 18 I had a stroke. I had woken up in the middle of the night and felt very strange. My right side was not working quite right and I could not move my hand or fingers. This was devastating to me for I had started to play the piano at 16 and played by ear. After this had happened I tried to play some of the songs that I knew. My left hand worked but I could barely pluck out one note on my right hand. Within a few days of this happening, I went in to the ER. I found out I had very high blood pressure. The first time they checked it, they could not believe what it was. They tried a different cuff and then a different machine but the readings always came back the same, 320/280……….. Yes, I can hear that gasp when I go out to speak and I get to this part of the speech. It does not fail I hear it through out the audience. By the end of the day I was diagnosed with a stroke, Hypertension (High Blood Pressure) and congested heart failure. They put me on meds and within a few months things were looking good. My blood pressure was good and my right side hands and finger’s came back. I can still sit down and am able to play the piano with no issues. Within a year or so I thought that I knew better. Why take meds? I am doing great I said to myself. So what did a young man of 19 or 20 do? I stopped everything. By 2013, it caught up with me. My diagnose was hypertension and a horse shoe kidney. A horse shoe kidney happens during the pregnancy. The two kidneys don’t separate. By them not separating, one of the potential complications is high blood pressure. Had I did what I was supposed to do, I more than likely would not have had to start dialysis until later on in life if it all. Lesson 1-Learn the lesson that life is trying to teach you the first time. Think about it this way, if you go to school and you don’t try to learn what is being taught, and then you take the test and fail. What do you have to do? Many times you will have to retake the test or course and you may even have to go back to summer school. So it is with life if you don’t learn the lesson the first time it is almost guaranteed you will have to learn it all over again, and the test may be greater than it was the first time. One piece of advice that I will give you and believe in is learn it the first time so you don’t have to go back and retake the test. I did not learn it from when had the stroke I had to do dialysis. Since then I have learned this lesson very well and apply it to my life.