My Kidney Journey*:
5 Things I’ll Never Forget

Photo: Afshin Tavakoli

A few weeks ago I was invited to be the patient speaker at a KQuIP event for medical staff here in North West England. Honestly, this was a bit of a daunting prospect! I’m not a confident speaker at the best of times, so the thought of standing up and doing a 20-minute presentation about some very personal, sensitive aspects of my life, in front of an audience vastly more knowledgeable than I am was more than a little nerve-wracking!

After spending quite some time scratching my head about what on earth I should say, I concluded the best thing to do was give up on trying to talk about the medical side of everything that’s happened to me, and focus more on specific incidents that I think influenced my perception of myself as somebody with chronic kidney disease, and my ability to deal with the way my life has changed.

Unfortunately, this presentation wasn’t filmed so I can’t share it here, but when I sent a friend of mine the notes I’d written to speak from, she told me; “You absolutely have to put this on your blog!” So I have! This isn’t the direct text of the speech, obviously, but it’s the general content of it.

Links will be updated as the posts are live – the first one should be up tomorrow!

  1. “IS THIS REALLY ME?”
  2. “I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY…”
  3. BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
  4. IT’S OK TO NOT BE OK.
  5. CHOOSING TO BE EMPOWERED

*I hate this word, but it’s the one I ended up resorting to for lack of a better option.

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