- It is also known as Chronic Renal Failure or Kidney Failure.
- It is Gavin’s diagnosis.
- It means that Gavin’s kidneys don’t work.
- It is a serious condition that is long term, permanent, and will eventually result in death unless a kidney transplant is performed.
What do the kidneys do?
Their primary functions are to filter the blood and eliminate (excrete) metabolic waste products, excess water and electrolytes (such as potassium, sodium, glucose, bicarbonate – in other words, they regulate fluid balance in the body.
Additionally, many drugs are eliminated by the kidneys.
Kidneys also help regulate blood pressure by:
- excreting excess sodium – if too much sodium in the bloodstream your BP( blood pressure) increases
- secreting the enzyme renin (when BP falls below normal the kidneys secrete renin (renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system)
A person with kidney failure is less able to regulate BP and tends to have high BP .
Additionally, kidneys secrete the hormone erythropoietin – which stimulates the production of red blood cells (RBC’s) in the bone marrow and the bone marrow then releases the RBC’s into the bloodstream.
Kidneys (along with several other organ systems) regulate the growth and maintenance of healthy bones by regulating levels of calcium and phosphorous – minerals critical to bone health – they do this by converting inactive vitamin D to active vitamin D – (vitamin D is a type of hormone produced in the skin and present in many foods – “calcitriol†is the active form of vitamin D and it is the calcitriol that stimulates the absorption of calcium and phosphorous from the small intestine).
A note of human interest: on average, approximately one-fifth of your total blood supply, – 1.3 qt (1.2l) of blood – in your body passes through your healthy kidneys every minute.
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My prayers are with your family. My mother is 79yrs old and just going into end stage renal failure. Thanks to your website not only am I much more informed about the function of healthy kidneys, I am able to put into perspective and be thankful for having had my mother withme for so long. I pray that you too will have success in find a donor for Gavin and that he will live a long and prosperous life.
Hello me and my wife are proud to be expecting a baby boy, with a due date of november 1st. We just found out that one of his kidneys may not work and the other one is dialated. I saw that your son only had one functioning kidney and the other barely hanging in there. I was wondering what kind of symptons baby Gavin was showing during the ultra sounds. were his fluid levels normal?
please contact me back asap
via email
abel22perez@yahoo.com
much love and prays to baby Gavin and family
thank you
worried father….
My little nephew 1 month old is diagnosed with acute renal failure when he started a fever on his 7 days old, admitted hospital for 5 days in private hospital(injection of antibiotic and fever medicine) and turned seizure and coma refer to our general hospital at
KUALA LUMPUR and doctor diagnosed as sepsis/pnemonia and became acute renal failure! Became too ill to be treated as doctor tried 2 times dialysis also failed, whatever treatment that can think of already given, no improvement! Everyone give up, sent back home without any medication, 13 days from hospital he became stronger but with kidney failure symptom wake up from coma, urine pass motion and can suck milk by himself, this few days signed of pain when carried and put him down he will cried loudly. We pray to Jesus for a miracle healing. As his improvement all have been proven, now waiting another miracle healing on his kidney as dialysis is too painful for a small baby.