Dialysis Began.

In May 2007 I was working in Los Angeles and knew that there was something wrong. I had terrible headaches, my heart would race with light activity, my ankles were swollen, and then there was a dark spot in my vision.

I remember going to the doctor, a doctor that I had never seen before and picked at random, and getting my blood pressure taken. The doctor looked nervous, and that is never a good thing when your doctor looks nervous! He sent me the emergency room at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, a busy Los Angeles hospital that had 24 hour police dogs to smell drugs and explosives. I had neither. I had expected to sit in the waiting room for awhile, after all I wasn't in critical condition. Or so I thought. After telling the triage nurse why I had come in, another nurse took my blood pressure.

Nurse: "Do you mind if I take your blood pressure in your other arm?"
Me: "Sure, no problem."

Then the nurse picked up the phone and started telling someone on the other end of the line my information.

Nurse: "We have a 33 year old male with BP of 260 over 180 in both arms"....pause....Room 1. You got it."
Nurse: "Come with me sir."

This is when I knew that something was really wrong. You don't go to the front of the line in a busy hospital for nothing. Suddenly a team of doctors, nurses, machines, and needles descended on me. A bombardment of questions and health history.

Doctor: "What drugs are you on?"
Me: "I am not on any drugs."
Doctor: "Seriously, what drugs have you taken?"
Me: "I am not on any drugs, I am studying to be a pastor."

Well, it was only a matter of time before the blood that had been drawn made it to the laboratory, the lab techs did whatever they do, and the results came back to my curtained "room" with a doctor telling me he had "bad news."
I had hoped to never hear those words from a doctor. But I just did.

Doctor: "Your kidneys are failing."
Me: "What does that mean? How did that happen? What could have caused that?"

No matter how many questions I asked, how many answers I heard, it couldn't bring any change to the sinking feeling I had in my heart and stomach. It is a horrible feeling to know nothing of what is going on and what is going to happen.

I was brought to the ICU. Over the next six days I was visited by my wife, family, and friends. I had pictures of newborn Calvin taped to the walls. I learned about Immuno-globulin A Nephropathy, or IGAN. I had a port-catheter inserted into my chest that had a tube near my heart. I had a kidney biopsy. I didn't know where this was going.

Me: "Lord, why is this happening to me? I am just getting ready to start my ministry as a new pastor. I have a 6 week old son. Why is this happening to ME?"
Lord: ".........."

It is interesting how sometimes the Lord appears not to answer. I wanted a voice to say, "oh, I made a mistake. I will now heal you." But that answer did not appear. What did appear was lots of prayer asking for that answer to be healing.

I went home with prescriptions I couldn't read and started a life I knew nothing about. One morning I got up at 7am and drove to a place I didn't know existed. I walked into a waiting room full of people I didn't know. I was escorted to a recliner with a machine I had never seen before.

Dialysis began.