I have looked at hundreds of death certificates the past few years. \u00a0All of them were issued after the death of a family member. \u00a0Some have been close relatives, many have been distant cousins. \u00a0I expected to see that the majority\u00a0of deaths were due to heart attacks or stroke. \u00a0I was wrong.<\/p>\n
Kidney disease has been far and away the biggest killer in the family.<\/p>\n
When I was pregnant with my second child, my dad made an offhand comment about his mother having some sort of kidney disease. \u00a0I mentioned it to my OB\/G and to my cousin who was also pregnant. \u00a0My daughter did not have anything wrong with her kidneys. \u00a0My cousin’s daughter did. \u00a0Since then I have wondered if the disease was actually genetic or just randomly happened. \u00a0If it was genetic, what side of the family was it coming from.<\/p>\n
My father’s side is riddled with it. \u00a0There is a high incidence on his mother’s side, but his father’s side was riddled with it. \u00a0My great-great grandfather Leonidas Kirkland died from uremic convulsions (now known as uremic encephalopathy) as a result of Chronic Bright’s Disease. \u00a0 His sister Mattie June died of uremic coma due to hydronephrosis. \u00a0She had been operated on\u00a0in June of 1899 at Johns Hopkins. \u00a0His brother Arthur\u00a0died of polycystic kidney disease. \u00a0His daughter Mildred died of polycystic kidney disease. \u00a0My great-grandmother Gussie lost her sister Vertie to uremia due to chronic nephritis. \u00a0My great-great-grandmother Emma Clark died of Chronic Bright’s Disease.<\/p>\n
When you see all the greats and great-greats, you have a tendency to think of this as being in the distant past. \u00a0It isn’t. \u00a0A horrible bout with kidney stones reminded me that some things are part of the human experience. \u00a0Medical advances can repair or treat, but that doesn’t necessarily prevent something happening to your kidneys or heart or any other part of the body.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have looked at hundreds of death certificates the past few years. \u00a0All of them were issued after the death of a family member. \u00a0Some have been close relatives, many have been distant cousins. \u00a0I expected to see that the majority\u00a0of deaths were due to heart attacks or stroke. \u00a0I was wrong. Kidney disease has … Continue reading take care of your kidneys<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bbq-n-grits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bbq-n-grits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bbq-n-grits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bbq-n-grits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bbq-n-grits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bbq-n-grits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":176,"href":"http:\/\/bbq-n-grits.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bbq-n-grits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bbq-n-grits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bbq-n-grits.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}