Episode 47: A Mother’s Strength When Dealing With A Kidney Transplant Followed By Rejection, With Chasity Williams

On this episode of This Thing Called Life, host Andi is speaking with Chastity Williams. She will tell her life story of how she ignored her high blood pressure problem and ended up on dialysis and the difficulties that led to a kidney transplant. Tune in now to hear her story. 

 

Episode Highlights: 

• Andi shines light on the truth about donations. There is no age limit or medical conditions that prevent you from registering to be a donor or having the potential to be a donor. Even if you have been cancer-free for five years and have not received treatment during those five years, you could be a donor. Even if you have hepatitis, you could still be a donor. People who are into their 80s and 90s have been donors and have given the healing gifts of tissue and cornea.
• Even if you have active cancer, you can be a cornea donor. Andi encourages the listeners to renew and not remove yourself from the registry. If you say yes to donation, this is your opportunity to bless others when you have passed away; You can bless them as a donor. 
• Chastity shares about her high blood pressure and how the doctor could not let her leave because it was so high; He ended up calling an ambulance and took her to the hospital. 
• Chastity was young, 20 or 21 years old. She was always told that blood pressure affected older people, people who didn't eat right and people who were overweight and she didn’t fit any of those descriptions.
• Chastity has the habit of googling things and sometimes Google is very helpful. It told her about the White Coat syndrome.
• Andi explains what a White Coat syndrome is. It might be the feeling of anxiety that someone gets while visiting the doctor.
• Chastity's mother and father passed away when she was three years old. Her grandmother raised her and at the time when she got Chastity, she was pretty old.
• On top of high blood pressure, she developed an allergy that they couldn't figure out where it came from. They said it could be stress induced hives.
• Chastity wasn't consistent enough taking her medicines. One time she went to the emergency room, and they ran some tests, and they said, your kidneys look like they are starting to suffer. 
• Every time Chastity went to a doctor’s  appointment, she ended up being hospitalized.
• Chastity's blood pressure reached 180/139. So, the doctors pumped her with all the medicine. It was then that she realized it was her new home till January as her baby was due then. 
• Her baby was born on November 25th and he weighed 2 pounds and 14 ounces. He is Chastity's miracle son. Today he's 16 years old. He's doing fine. He had nothing wrong with him. 
• Chastity started going to the doctor regularly and they just couldn't figure out why she was walking around every day with high blood pressure. She used to be on at least anywhere between 8 and 10 blood pressure pills twice a day. Every time she would go to the hospital, they would say that they had never seen somebody on so many pills who still had hypertensive episodes from time to time, and she ended up on dialysis.
• The dialysis made her look at life so much differently. That was when she just sat down and realized that she had been running at full speed for so long, and now she had slowed down and evaluated life.  
• Andi and Chasity discuss when it came time that she needed a kidney, how she asked people in her circles about donation, and who became her ultimate donor.
• For Chastity the first-week post-transplant was absolutely great. But after some time, her health deteriorated. She shares about the struggles and treatments. 
• Chastity gives her insights into the patients who are kind of following the same pathway of ignoring some signs and some doctor's orders. 

3 Key Points:

1. Chastity shares how even though her blood pressure was high why she waited a year to go to the hospital.
2. When Chastity used to work at a hospital, she used to tell her patients not to leave the room if they still had questions and to make sure the doctor answered those questions.
3. Chastity was one of the people who thought if you get a transplant, you get better. But that didn't happen for her. She shares the journey and importance of taking care of your health and the role that organ donation has.

 

Resources Mentioned:

• LifeCenter | Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube|  Twitter
• Andi Johnson  website |LinkedIn 
• Organ Donation Website
• https://cerebral.com/
• http://nomi.org/