Stage 5 Kidney Disease Patient Avoids Transplant and Reduces Medications

Shana Anderson (00:00) had gotten to a point where I was severely just depressed just with everything that was going on, but still functioning, still helping people, still doing what I needed to do. But in working with her, it wasn't just about my kidney health that she addressed. She started to address things like in my medical history that no doctor had ever done. she was not only able to adjust my kidney health, but she was able to adjust my diabetes, my blood pressure, even starting to dig into other reasons why I was having other medical concerns. And so she started to treat it from a holistic We were talking about methods and treatments and things that no doctor has ever talked to me about ever. I'm Shana Anderson. I am a licensed professional counselor in the Chicago land area Before working with Dr. Irfan, I was really, really scared. I had recently received a diagnosis of chronic kidney disease, and it was stage four initially when I got diagnosed, but it had progressed to stage five pretty quickly. I was seeing a nephrologist at the time, and they told me that the only options for me was to get a kidney transplant. i had just gotten married. And so I didn't know what life was going to look like for me because I was thinking like, well, what happens with the transplant? it was just a really, really difficult time for us as a family. what made me trust the Institute was actually I was sitting and I was praying and just looking up things online and I was on YouTube and all of a sudden the kidney Institute and Dr. Irfan's videos had come across my feed and so I said well let me just take a look at it and just see what it And so I reached out to do the consultation initially and she put me at ease from the very beginning and just told me that, you don't have to get a transplant. Like there are other options for you to what really made me excited about the information that she was bringing is because she's a trained physician. She's a nephrologist by training, then also too believes in holistic So her beliefs aligned with mine as a clinician, and I had not yet experienced that. The first moment that made me realize that it was working was how I felt overall. After being on the program just even for about two weeks, two to three weeks, my blood pressure numbers went down, my blood sugar numbers went down, I came off of a blood sugar medication within the first two weeks. I had come off of a pill and a half of blood pressure medication within the first two weeks of the program and just my overall energy. I wasn't getting any more cramping. I had debilitating cramping where I couldn't walk or get out of the bed. I had bad edema, swelling. So I started to see the changes in my body first in how I felt. I felt a lot clearer. I felt a lot quicker, like with my thinking. I had started seeing Dr. Irfan and my GFR was actually at a 14 when I started. And so at 14, you're technically in stage 5 of CKD. So at that point, they recommend dialysis and transplant. after doing the small steps, changing the diet, doing the things that she told me to do, stuff started to improve immediately. Within that 12 weeks, I lost about 25 to 30 pounds just by changing the things that we were doing. I have a lot more energy. And now my husband and I are talking about family planning and what that looks like for us. So it's changed a lot, a lot of stuff for us. Everybody's results will vary, but the important piece is to be consistent in whatever it is, the information that you get, and your results are literally your own. it's an opportunity for you to take it into your own hands, the information that you're getting, and so it works.