It's not every day...

Over the last thirty years I have suffered from over fifty bi-lateral kidney stones. Sometimes after waiting agonising weeks, they would pass, but five times I required surgery to remove them.  At one time, I had surgery twice in a month. It is the most painful of pains and surgery.

At each occasion, no one seemed interested in finding out why I made them, and didn't send them off to be analysed. I was miserable and lived in fear of the onset of back pain which signalled a stone was coming. Of course, being in traction for my back two weeks at a time didn't help matters. I always seemed to get a stone after being in hospital.

Fed up, after passing a charming 6mm jagged stone, I changed doctors and at last I found one who was curious to know why I kept making them. He kept the stone I showed him and sent it off for analysis. But better yet, he sent me to see a kidney specialist who was at the time associated with our local hospital in Dandenong.

The renal specialist was Margot McIver, a very approachable older lady, who became a pioneer in renal medicine in Australia.  Margot spent a lot of the consultation questioning me about my health. She was interested that I had an identical twin. Then she noticed my maiden name,  her interest was piqued. 

Chalkley was a name that rang a bell with her. In her training days at the Queen Victoria Hospital Melbourne, she was treating my mother during our birth. Mum had pre-eclampsia and uterine inertia plus a bad kidney infection. She remembered our hurried delivery by high forceps- we were lying transverse and were both breech. She said she was in the observation gallery for trainee doctors and remembered it well. She said our birth was complicated and she learned a lot from her teacher doctor.

Margot was the only doctor ever to offer condolences for the still born twin girls I had given birth to in 1969 and to venture an opinion on the cause of their death in utero. Her opinion was an untreated kidney infection took their lives. Very common in multiple pregnancies, she said.

She had me do many blood tests and 24 hour samples of urine and later went on to diagnose me with calcium oxylate stones in uric acid. I was given allopurinol to reduce the uric acid in my blood and so give the calcium oxylate nothing to bind with. I have had no stones since taking it....

I was sad to read of her death in Queensland in 2012 at age 78 . She would have been the same age as my mother...

Margot will always be remembered for her compassionate and caring manner as well as medical expertise. I was amazed that I got to meet the doctor who looked after my mother and watched my birth at the training hospital. She touched me lightly on the arm as she said goodbye at my last visit and voiced what I had been thinking, "It was lovely to meet you: who would have thought?... it's not every day...!" 

© Glenys Robyn Hicks

 So teach [us] to number our days, that we may apply [our] hearts unto wisdom.  Psalm 90:12