FIRST ENTRY

Oh dear. I know this layout is completely wrong but I liked the shaggy background so I'll just stay an individual with a unique design.

I want to start this blog because I have Polycystic Kidney Disease. This is an inherited (usually) disease that is passed from parent to child. If a child is lucky enough not to get it (like my 2 sisters) their kids are safe as well, it doesn't skip generations.

There's lots of information on the Web about this condition but it you are interested in the basics you can find them here:  Genetics Home Reference

We who have PKD are born with it, it isn't something that develops, but there is no telling when it will start to affect your life. There are lots of children who are close to kidney failure because of it, or there are people like my aunt who lived to 90 before she had to go onto dialysis. At 64 I am apparently 2-3 years from needing to start dialysis. I'm trying really hard to slow the progression of my disease by eating right... and I need to exercise more, I know that.

I was diagnosed at age 23 but it's never really caused a problem aside from high blood pressure and, now that I look back at my life, lack of energy. I'm 64 now. I still have no real symptoms aside from exhaustion a lot of the time.

One of the main things I've struggle with is diet. Cutting down on salt was easy, but then they get into phosphorous and potassium and protein. I do have a guide but it says you can have 3 servings of this and 2 servings of that, etc. For a snack one diet said "9 grapes". Are you kidding me? 9 grapes? No way would that stave off the hungries. But I am trying. I'm trying to use recipes from renal friendly sites and a lot of them have how many grams or mgrams per serving of particular nutrients.

So I've decided to write a blog with my own recipes that I've changed to be more renal friendly and links to recipes that I've tried and like.

I'm not a dietician so can't say that my recipes are exactly right but the recipes that the links lead to are written by dieticians.