Kidney health

Gerald: They told me my right kidney, it was functioning at something like level three when there were five levels. And, there is one, one  is obviously working at high efficiency, two just below,  and three is quite acceptable for someone of my age. Even though it, it's, it has been damaged in the past. And in fact, my, my GP said probably my I’m -, my kidneys are working as well as any other 80 year old. So there's nothing to worry about.

Kath: I wouldn't say I've had regular checks. I've -, if I was going to the surgery for any particular reason, they would sometimes say ‘I think we'd better take a blood sample tests make sure your kidneys are functioning ok’.  And as soon as I moved here it was the very first thing they did was to take some blood to test my kidneys and I think they've done it twice since or something like that.

Bill: I would like to know more of what is wrong or why the kidneys are going wrong, but I'm not sure how to ever go about, you know, how to ask questions or -, I just, I just don't know enough about it.

Laura: I'm very lucky really because lots of people don't get their kidney disease discovered until they fail, or until they’re very near failure. I was at 50% kidney function when I was discovered, and I'm only a little bit worse than that now. That was 16 or 17 years ago that it was first discovered.

Eric: I've never had any problem with my water works and if somebody hadn't told me that I’d got chronic kidney disease I wouldn't know. I get no effects at all of what is happening to my kidneys.