A family affair

Alistair: I was born in Zimbabwe in 1961, the eldest of 4 children.  My father was ill before I was born.  The story goes that he worked as a Conservation officer spending long days in the Zimbabwean bush veld.  It was hot and dry and because he never drank enough water, he developed kidney stones.  The cure for kidney stones in 1960 was a large operation, cutting into the kidney through the muscle in the back and physically removing the stones.  In order to make the stones show up on the x-ray, iodine was injected into his system.  One of the stones moved and blocked the iodine into the kidney which subsequently went bad and had to be removed.  The infection went into the bone of his hip and he had an open wound in his groin from before I was born until he died in 1974.  Up until the time he was diagnosed with kidney stones he was totally unaware that he had Polycystic Kidney disease.  Following a number of different operations and a variety of complications including the amputation of his right leg and a stroke, he died aged 39 of renal failure when I was 12.

Although we did not know it at the time all four of his children, me, my brother and my two sisters had all inherited Polycystic Kidney disease.  I remember being diagnosed when I was 24.  I had just finished 2 years in the Army.  Having done the Officers Course and gone on to join the Paras  I was at peak fitness, but had been suffering quite badly with really bad headaches.  I thought they were stress related and did not pay them too much attention.  When I was told that I had PKD it did not initially mean a lot to me.  I was young and fit and once my blood pressure was under control felt really well again.  I remember phoning my mother after my consultation and being quite surprised when she broke down and wept.  She cried perhaps because she knew what was in store for me having been through the experience with my father throughout his illness.  She had seen the issues he had had to deal with and had nursed him through his illness.  I never really thought about it that much.