tina turner, who Died after prolonged illness at the age of 83who had high blood pressure, or high blood pressure his kidneys were affected and required a life-saving kidney donation from her husband, Erwin Bach, in 2017.
turner once wrote an essay For the Show Your Kidney Love campaign, which spreads awareness about kidney disease. in the essayTurner said that for a long time she did not realize the importance of treating her high blood pressure, and admitted that she “put herself in great danger by refusing to accept the reality that I would have to take high blood pressure daily for the rest of my life.” Medicine is needed.”
She was first diagnosed with high blood pressure in 1978, “but didn’t care much about it,” she said. Years later, in 2009, she had a stroke because she was not controlling her high blood pressure. He came to know that his kidneys have stopped working at 35% of their function.
He eventually started dialysis. “It was my only option, but it was frustrating to be hooked to a machine for hours,” she wrote. “For the next nine months, my whole life was about dialysis. I realized that the struggle for treatment is always also the struggle for accurate information.”
Chronic kidney failure is known as the “silent killer” because “symptoms are not noticeable until as much as 80 percent of renal tissue has been destroyed,” Turner continued. “As it happened to me, high blood pressure is one of the most frequent causes of kidney failure.”
For people experiencing kidney failure, a transplant is “often the treatment of choice compared to a lifetime on dialysis,” Mayo Clinic explains, About this one third of the cases, which involves transplantation from a living donor. With the help of her husband, Turner took this route.
“I was fortunate that Irwin offered to donate one of his kidneys to me. This was the first step in a kidney transplant, a very complicated procedure,” she wrote.
Turner and Bach, a German music executive, were together for 27 years before marrying in 2013. they lived in Europe for decades, recently a House near Zurich, Switzerland,
Bertrand Rindoff Petroff / Getty Images
After the transplant, she said she experienced a “never-ending” series of ups and downs as her body tried to reject the new organ, which can happen after such procedures.
“Sometimes it requires more hospital admissions,” she said. “I was nauseous and dizzy, I forgot things, and was very scared. These problems still haven’t completely resolved. I’m on several prescriptions and trying to follow my doctors’ orders carefully. I’m very careful. Because I know I can trust them.” and their treatment.”
Survival rates for kidney donation recipients have improved over the years – going from 66% in 1996–1999 to 78% in 2012–2015, according to a study Published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Patients who receive living kidney donations, like Turner, have also seen an increase in success rates, according to the study.
Management of diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes can help improve the success rate of kidney donation. According to Mayo Clinic.
According to donate life, which raises awareness for organ donation, there are more than 90,000 people waiting for a kidney donation in the US. It can take an average of three to five years to receive a kidney from a deceased donor, but with a living donor—one who is willing to donate a kidney while they are alive—the wait can be shorter.
one of the turners recent instagram postsJust months before his death, Show Your Kidneys Love was partnered with International World Kidney Day on March 9 to raise awareness of kidney health.
in another instagram posts from 2021, Turner gives an account of how her relationship with Bach began. “When I first asked Irwin out, it was a spur of the moment decision. Sometimes seconds change your life. Because you feel a spark, an instant connection,” she wrote, referring to one of their Hugging while sharing a black and white picture.
Caitlin O’Kane
