Erik Deckers
When I was in my teens and 20s, I never worried about my health or safety. I laughed at the notion that I could be injured or killed despite doing some pretty stupid things. But God watches over babies and fools, so I was pretty sure I was protected: I was a cute baby.
When I was 18, I zipped under an excavator’s bucket on my bike as it was lowering, scaring the bejeezus out of the driver.
When I was nine years old, I fell off my bike and broke my arm.
When I was 11, I was riding my bike in a parking lot and misjudged the distance and speed between me and an approaching car. He was going pretty slow, but I still ended up on the hood, scaring the bejeezus out of both of us and scraping up my hands and knees.
I can’t tell you the number of times I wiped out on my bike, especially during my racing days, leaving me with an impressive array of scars on my legs, elbows and shoulder.
As I look back, the common factor was my bicycle, so I blame it for my injuries.
Those weren’t my only idiotic injuries, though. I lost count of the times I sprained my knees and ankles playing soccer and Ultimate Frisbee. I’ve twisted my right ankle so many times that I still get a twinge if I step in a divot in my yard.
It was my sense of youthful invincibility that saw me back on the bike or the playing field a lot sooner than was medically advisable.
Now that I’m older, I don’t do the things I used to because the worst-case scenarios stampede through my brain, and I think, “Welp, this is how I go out.”
These bubble up during my nightly bathroom visit, and I think, “Why do I have to go at 4 a.m.? Are my kidneys malfunctioning?”
“No,” I realize the next morning. “It’s because you’re getting old.”
I’m fine once the sunlight beams in through my window. But in the dead-middle of the night, I often worry about becoming, well, dead in the middle of the night.
Several months ago, I launched a new daily sit-up regimen so I could finally firm up my middle. That first day, I did a few dozen sit-ups to shock my body into immediate gains.
That night, when I visited the bathroom, I felt a sharp stabbing pain in my stomach.
“It IS my kidneys!” I fretted.
I started sweating as I ran through all the scenarios it was likely to be: I was going to have to go onto a transplant list. But I could only afford a pig kidney.
I was going to need dialysis three times a week, and it would cost $10 million per month.
Or I would have to get a home dialysis unit and spend every day hooked up to it.
I lay in bed, unable to sleep, as each mental image got worse and worse. I tried to roll over, and the pain in my abs flared again.
“The sit-ups!” I thought. “I’m sore from those stupid sit-ups.”
When I realized I wasn’t going into renal failure, I fell asleep, tired from dodging death yet again.
And then, last week, I was worried about my brain.
I saw a story from 2018 about a man whose nose was constantly running for five years. Gregory Phillpotts of North Carolina thought he had runaway allergies, but doctors had diagnosed him with pneumonia and bronchitis. Except that wasn’t it.
His brain was leaking.
He was losing cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), which is the fluid that cushions your brain against serious injury, such as jumping up and down.
Doctors plugged the hole with skin from another part of his body, and he was all better.
Except now I probably had it.
I have seasonal allergies and will blow my nose throughout the day.
Or did I have brain leakage? How did it start? Is it fatal? Is that why I wake up every night? Did my kidney almost-failure cause it?
I Googled possible causes: Do allergies cause brain leakage? Can cheeseburgers cause it? Can you get it from doing too many sit-ups?
Apparently, CSF leakage can be caused by a head injury, surgery or other medical procedures.
So, unless I hit my head and forgot all about it, I don’t have CSF leakage. So I don’t have to give up cheeseburgers, but I did give up sit-ups. Better safe than sorry.
Still, I had to make sure, so I jumped up and down for several minutes to see if I got a headache, doing a little Jazzercise. I felt fine, but I was sweaty and winded afterward.
I went to bed that night, satisfied that I was safe once again, but I woke up that night to severe leg cramps.
“Oh God, my kidney failure is in my calves now!”
