Dialysis, what’s that?

From1997

life for the Rasmussen family was going happily, healthy and busy. We had been living Central Oregon for a good chunk of time on a small ranch, had our wood working business and enjoying our boys while they grew like weeds. My health now awesome after 10 years post heart/lungs transplant while we enjoyed our horses, chickens, pigs, cats and dogs! We had quite a few friends with children close to the same age as ours, most all rode horses with us and to top it all off, our ranch looked out over the Cascade mountain range & Smith Rocks mountains. Everything was awesome!

One sunny typical 23 degree morning we were driving to town when I noticed I felt like I needed to pull over and throw up. Very weird but Renee and I thought maybe a flu bug but no one else was sick? After getting out I did throw up and the felt better so no worries, right?

After two weeks of this often happening we took me to the doctors. It took many blood tests and found my creatinine level was high and I needed to see a nephrologist aka the kidney doc. We were bummed as I haven’t had a real health problem since the transplant.

It’s shocking how quickly we can fall back to the whining & complaining phase of life, “I don’t wanna be sick again”! Well, we don’t always get what we want. After seeing the new doc and more tests I was diagnosed with kidney failure. It seems a kidney transplant was eventually headed our way but first we would find what dialysis was all about.