I is for IVs (Ep. 6)

“You have to be admitted to hospital.”

Over the phone, the nurse told me my creatinine had spiked to over 500. A normal creatinine range was 45-90. My skin flooded with tingles of panic, an urgency I had never felt before. After all these years, my kidneys were failing.

The ER doors breezed open, and Mum and I walked towards the huge Admitting sign. It felt weird walking in like this. Like I was consenting to my kidneys’ decline. Before long, I was back in that scratchy gown that never fully closed in the back, exposing way too much of my bum even though Mum insisted nudity was natural and nothing to be ashamed of, especially in a hospital.

I was 18 years old.

When the IV needle went in, tears sprang to my eyes. The nurse jabbed it in and out and in and out of my stinging vein several times before blood flowed. I tried not to bawl. She hung bags of IV saline fluid for hydration and IV methylprednisolone for my inflamed kidneys to try and bring my creatinine down.

I was scheduled for a kidney biopsy.

I waited for 12 hours. “They are running behind…” was all I was told. I wasn’t allowed any food and only the tiniest sips of water. My stomach churned, roaring with disapproval until night crawled in through my room’s tall windows. Finally, they wheeled me down down downstairs, cement walls zooming by, fluorescents blinding me from above, my heart beating with every click of the gurney’s wheel.

“Can you feel anything, Henriette?”

“Just pressure,” I murmured, sedated from a spastic jab to my thigh, adding something like, “This isn’t my first time,” to which all the doctors and nurses laughed. I felt an odd inclination to make the professionals feel at ease, even though I was the one face down on the table, wildly exposed, with a one honey of an 8-inch needle plunging into my lower back.

The next day, the news was grim and unexpected.

“They took out liver tissue instead of kidney tissue.”

Somewhere in the haze of my confusion, above the plummet of my stomach, a comment about my beautiful liver flew by, and I thought, “What are you, an idiot? Why would I be worried about my liver? Yeah, that half glass of wine I had when I was 14 really caught up with me.”

Mum went ballistic, instigating an inquiry. My pragmatic Scandinavian champion was Mama Bear fearless in battling to get to the bottom of this screw up. I could just hear her curious hybrid British-Danish-Canadian accent flying, as she demanded,

“WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO MY GIRL?

A couple days after the liver fiasco, a doctor walked into my hospital room. Nicole, my bf, was on one side, my Boyfriend with Dark Hair on the other, each holding my hand. The unknown doctor pulled up a chair opposite me and looked me in the eyes. Then he apologized.

(Was apologizing to a patient standard practice in a children’s hospital, or was this a greater fuck up than I understood? Or was he just really Canadian?)

I wasn’t particularly friendly. I deserved this apology. My lower back was sore, taking days to acutely heal, and I would forever have a crooked scar that felt icky and numb to the touch. According to my Boyfriend with Dark Hair, I sliced doc down with a flash of my cool gray eyes, barely mumbling a thank you.

“If looks could kill,” Nicole agreed.

I didn’t feel badly about my behavior. Not one bit.

Dr. B. asked me if I wanted to repeat the biopsy.

“Are we going to learn anything we don’t know?” I asked.

“No.”

I declined another biopsy.

With that decision, I crossed over into adulthood. That was my moment. Not those hot summer nights with my Boyfriend with Dark Hair. Not my acceptance into university. Not voting or driving or travelling Europe.

It was the realization that I had a say in my health. That it wasn’t all up to the doctors.

When I was discharged, I asked Dr. B. to give it to me straight. He spread open the paper graph of my kidney levels and blood values from over four years and showed me where my creatinine was today. Then he dragged his finger in a downward motion to the bottom of the page.

“If your kidneys continue to decline at this pace, you will need a transplant by Christmas.”