Memoirs of a Fat Girl

I was born with a defective bladder.

Before I go on, I want you to know that I do not like talking about my health. Not one bit. If it were up to me, I'd skip the whole subject altogether, but what I'm about to tell you over the next little while has everything to do with your better health.

To tell this story effectively, I have to include my own history. Here goes.

I was born with a defective bladder or, more specifically, a defective ureter. Here's your five cent anatomy lesson: your kidneys filter all the body's wastes and liquids, then release them into your bladder, where you pee them out. The tubes connecting your kidneys to your bladder are called ureters. Make sense?

Hospitals and doctors in the 70's didn't have the same levels of tolerance and understanding that they do today. Add to that equation frantic, immigrant parents with a poor English vocabulary, and it's no longer a mystery as to why it took years to diagnose me. According to Oli, I cried constantly when I was a baby, I was always sick, and I was always being taken to Emergency.

I can tell you exactly where my kidneys are located in my body, from all those years they were hurting. They still hurt sometimes, but nothing like back then. I remember days where I couldn't even stand up straight from the pain. Because of this, everyone assumed that my kidneys were the direct problem, that they weren't working properly, and so I was put through test after test after test.

If there had been more x-rays and less tests all those years, they would have found it much sooner. When I was 11 and taking roughly 27 prescription pills per day, my doctors ordered another x-ray, and were shocked to discover the size of my kidneys.

Normal kidneys are roughly the size of a five-year old's shoe. My left kidney was the size of a grown man's hand, and the right was the size of a bean.

In the plainest terms possible, here's what happened: the valve of my right ureter was being a broken two-way door, as opposed to a properly functioning one way. When everything is filtered out of your kidneys, goes through your ureters and to the bladder, it can't go back up. In my case, it did. The wastes burned my kidney again and again and, over time, shrunk it down to nearly nothing.

The left kidney saw that the right was in trouble, and could no longer handle its 50% load. Through the miracle of adaptation and the mechanism that is the human body, my left kidney grew to a mammoth size, and took on the extra work.

Your kidneys function half-half. From left to right, mine are at 85% and 15%, respectively.

Shortly after my 12th birthday I had surgery. The ureter was fixed, and I managed to avoid the worser things: dialysis, a transplant, death. I am very lucky.

The existing damage can't be undone though, and there's a long, long list of things I can't do: high risk, full contact sports; drinking obscene amounts of liquor, and having my own children is a big If. Remember my time at the Dead Sea? I'll never be able to swim there, for fear that osmosis will take in some of that insane salt content, and overwork my kidneys.

Every now and then, the pain comes back. About once a month, I'd say. It's okay though, it's a part of my life and I accept that, I just try to follow the rules and do what's best.

Now, why should my shotty kidneys have even the slightest impact on your life? What's it got to do with you?

Care to venture a guess?