Kidney Disease

Alonzo Mourning walked into the AmericanAirlines Arena conference room, grinning widely, looking healthy and happy. His facial expression and demeanor belied the news that followed. The Miami Heat announced yesterday that Mourning, the team's All-Star center and one of the NBA's top players, who just helped the United States win gold at the Olympics, will miss this season to concentrate on his battle with a kidney disease that eventually requires a transplant or dialysis in about half the documented cases.

DEAR ABBY: I have two sons, 19 and 12. My younger boy has a rare form of kidney disease. His kidney function is now normal, but his doctor says that in the future he may need a new kidney. At that point, his brother would be high on the list for compatibility and availability. I, sadly, would not. How does one mention the possibility of being a donor to his older brother? Is it even fair to ask? If he doesn't offer, would I always resent it? Should we wait until there is a real need before asking?

DEAR ABBY: I always knew high blood pressure ran in my family, but I never realized that it could cause kidney disease. Because I felt healthy, I hadn't worried about my "borderline" hypertension. Turns out, my kidneys were silently being damaged. I have since made lifestyle changes to control my blood pressure and prevent further damage. These include daily exercise and cutting back on salt, sweets and fast food. March is National Kidney Month, and March 14 is World Kidney Day. The National Kidney Foundation is urging Americans to learn their risk factors for kidney disease and to get their kidneys checked with a simple urine and blood test.

African Americans are four times as likely to have kidney disease as Caucasians, and a recent study from Harvard University may explain why. Nephrologist Martin Pollak and his team found that a common genetic mutation of the APOL1 gene might be partly responsible for African Americans' susceptibility. The mutation likely arose due to natural selection because it protects against African sleeping sickness, Pollak wrote. Yet it also makes African Americans more vulnerable to kidney disease, according to the study released last month in the online issue of Science Magazine.

All this week, students at Jenkintown Elementary School will traipse two by two, often a little sheepishly, into nurse Suzanne Holland's office to give urine specimens. When the students are done, Holland will dip multi-colored paper strips into the cups to see what happens. The strips screen for urinary-tract infections, kidney disease and diabetes. If the colors change, it's a sign that something may be wrong. In the first two days of the screening program, Holland found only a few samples that deviated from the norm.

Alonzo Mourning has a new four-year contract, even though it wasn't that long ago that the newest New Jersey Net didn't know whether he would have a four-year lease on life. The $22.7 million deal is guaranteed, but little else in Mourning's life is. Mourning says he feels great, is talking confidently, and by all accounts has been his usual warrior-like self while participating for the last month in informal workouts with his new team before training camp began on Friday. Nobody, including Mourning, is sure how he will hold up after missing last season with focal glomerulosclerosis, a disease that impairs the kidneys' ability to filter blood.

Linda Welsh's book was born as scribbles on scraps of paper. Thoughts and words and a jumble of emotions: fear and anger and fatigue and depression dragging on for days and weeks, then months and years. Eventually, the ideas she recorded during 60 to 70 trips to the hospital - most of them emergencies - made their way into a journal. Welsh had the makings of a book that she hopes will help others through where she has already been. For 15 years, Welsh and her two children lived with the chronic illness of her late husband, Barney Welsh, a Philadelphia trial lawyer who died in February of complications related to kidney disease.

John Stuart Katz, 72, of Society Hill, a film scholar, author, Penn professor, and one-half of a remarkable Philadelphia love story, died of complications from renal failure Friday, Nov. 26, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. A movie omnivore whose courses explored film's impact on political change, Mr. Katz coedited Image Ethics , a book about the moral ramifications of documentary films. He was passionate about nonfiction cinema such as Errol Morris' The Fog of War , but, if pressed, would say his favorite movie was Annie Hall . Mr. Katz cut a jaunty figure at York University in Toronto, where he was on the faculty for more than three decades, and at Penn, where he taught for 13 years in the English department.

After suffering from chronic kidney disease for a year and experiencing fatigue in recent months, Bishop Joseph Galante of the Catholic Diocese of Camden will begin dialysis treatments six times weekly beginning this month. In an online letter to members of the diocese, Galante said he had a series of medical procedures to prepare him for dialysis. The date of his first treatment has not been set, diocese spokesman Peter Feuerherd said. Although the sessions will last up to three hours each, Galante expects to continue his regular duties.

DEAR ABBY: For years, I suffered from high blood pressure and diabetes. I never had a clue that they are the two leading causes of kidney failure. After reading in your column about National Kidney Month, I decided to take your suggestion and go to the National Kidney Foundation website at kidney.org. When I attended their free screening through the Kidney Early Evaluation Program (KEEP), I found out that high blood pressure can damage the kidney, and that diabetes is the No. 1 risk factor for kidney disease.

DEAR ABBY: I always knew high blood pressure ran in my family, but I never realized that it could cause kidney disease. Because I felt healthy, I hadn't worried about my "borderline" hypertension. Turns out, my kidneys were silently being damaged. I have since made lifestyle changes to control my blood pressure and prevent further damage. These include daily exercise and cutting back on salt, sweets and fast food. March is National Kidney Month, and March 14 is World Kidney Day. The National Kidney Foundation is urging Americans to learn their risk factors for kidney disease and to get their kidneys checked with a simple urine and blood test.

CHICAGO - Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan was released from prison before dawn Wednesday, stopping only briefly at a halfway house before he was allowed to travel home to serve the rest of his sentence for corruption. By midday, Ryan was sitting in the living room of his spacious home in a leafy northern Illinois neighborhood in Kankakee, beaming and surrounded by his children and grandchildren, said Jim Thompson, his attorney and also a former governor. Ryan's discharge to home confinement just hours after arriving at the halfway house seemed to surprise even Thompson, who insisted Ryan got no special treatment.

The e-mail that Nancy Gleason received last September was lengthy: a last-ditch plea from a distant relative, writing to ask if she knew anyone who might be willing to donate a kidney to a stranger. Gleason clicked the "forward" button and typed in her husband's e-mail address. Her e-mail was just one line long: "We're both O-positive. I'm in if you are. " Eight months later, Chief Joe Gleason of the West Goshen Police Department was heading into surgery at the Mayo Clinic, about to give a major organ to a woman he had met two days before.

1QUIT SMOKING. The verdict has been in on this one since 1960, when the Surgeon General announced that smoking was harmful to your health. Besides that, it stains your teeth and hands, and gives you halitosis (bad breath). 2WEAR A SEAT BELT. Statistics show that seat belts add to longevity and help alleviate potential injuries in car crashes. Buckle down and buckle up. 3FLOSS YOUR TEETH. Recent studies make a direct connection between longevity and flossing. It's simple - brush and floss every day. 4DON'T DRINK TOO MUCH.

LAST JUNE the Daily News chronicled the story of longtime basketball official Joe DeMayo, a Northeast Philadelphia native, and the efforts of his colleagues to raise money to help his sons Michael and Joe Jr. in their battle with pediatric kidney disease. Now a benefit is being held by the family's friends in the community. It will take place Nov. 16 from 8 p.m. to midnight at the Local 692 Sprinkler Fitters Hall on McNulty Road in Parkwood. Tickets for the beef and beer are $40. The organizers, who are also soliciting auction items, encourage those that can't attend to support the cause by making any donation they can. For more information, Lou DeCree can be reached at 215-620-2270 or at loudecree@comcast.net . Or you can contact George Geiss at Hlinesman@aol.com . DeCree met DeMayo when they played against each other years ago in the Del-Val semipro league.

NEW YORK - U.S. deaths surpassed 2.5 million for the first time last year, reflecting the nation's growing and aging population. The increase of about 45,000 more deaths than in 2010 was not surprising. The annual number of deaths has been generally rising for decades as the population has swelled. Before last year, the largest number of deaths was 2.47 million in 2008. The number of deaths can rise or fall from year to year, depending on whether there was a bad flu season or other factors.

Jonathan A. Segal is a lawyer with Duane Morris in Philadelphia In June, the Montgomery County SPCA was granted a search-and-seizure warrant to rescue 36 cats that were being hoarded in Hatboro. The stench of animal waste, fleas, and decay was everywhere. The animals cried out for help, for human mercy, from conditions that defy description. We took pictures of what we found, but they are so horrific that we cannot publish most of them. The home was so decrepit that our officers required breathing apparatus and hazmat suits to enter the condemned building.

EVEN WHILE HOBBLED by severe kidney disease, which required weekly dialysis treatments, Reggie Schell was out on Cecil B. Moore Avenue passing out leaflets or holding up signs, relentless in his pursuit of justice for black people. The former leader of the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, Reggie was never deterred from working for the cause of equality for black people, the mission that had consumed him since the '60s - driving him to join demonstrations, work to get out the black vote and to get involved in other efforts to improve the community and the lives of his people.

DEAR ABBY: For years, I suffered from high blood pressure and diabetes. I never had a clue that they are the two leading causes of kidney failure. After reading in your column about National Kidney Month, I decided to take your suggestion and go to the National Kidney Foundation website at kidney.org. When I attended their free screening through the Kidney Early Evaluation Program (KEEP), I found out that high blood pressure can damage the kidney, and that diabetes is the No. 1 risk factor for kidney disease.