Transcript
October 19, 2014, I headed to Jefferson Hospital because I was having what I thought were minor symptoms. We stopped at Starbucks on the way. We were just very relaxed. Watched Eagle Football in the emergency room and I thought I'd be looked at, and they would send me home.
Acute Renal Failure
They took me back into the emergency room and within just a couple minutes, there were doctors from five different departments of the hospital. And what I didn't know is I was in acute renal failure. My kidneys were dying and I didn't know it.
That started a ten-day hospital stay, which I thought would be the end of my hospital travail and they would take care of me. And that was the beginning of three years of travail, six surgeries, surgery every four months. When you have a surgery every four months, you never recover. Lost 65% of my kidney function and have since had to deal with the results of that in terms of the things that I'm facing in my physical body that I never thought I would have to face.
I think the thing about my story is just the shock of it all. I'm fit. I'm an exerciser. My physical self-image was I'm fine and all of a sudden, to realize that if I had waited another seven to ten days, I would have died is shocking and discouraging; and to know that you'll never be the physical person that you were is hard to accept. And that's the story of suffering -- we don't get the script ahead of time.
