I Was Running Too Fast to Notice I Was Dying
I was a competitive drag racer. Eight-second quarter-miles. Magazine features. My car was in Chevrolet Performance. I was building a career in IT security, and living at a pace that left no room for anything that looked like weakness. When you're running that hard, you tell yourself the fatigue is because you're busy. The swelling in your ankles is because you've been on your feet. The blood pressure readings? You'll deal with those later. There's always a later.
Except sometimes there isn't. I had Stage 5 Chronic Kidney Disease, and I didn't know it until I was in the ICU. My kidneys were functioning at single-digit percentages. My body had been sending signals for years — real, loud, impossible-to-miss signals — and I had been too focused on the finish line to read any of them. That's not drama. That's just what happened. And it happens to more of us than anyone talks about.
"The warning signs were there. The fatigue. The swelling. The high blood pressure at every physical. I told myself I was just busy. I was just tired. I was just getting older. I was wrong on all of it."
Dialysis is three days a week, four hours a session, needles going into your arm and your blood running through a machine while the rest of the world keeps moving. I won't sugarcoat it. There were days I sat in that chair and didn't know who I was anymore. But I also made a decision in that chair: I was going to build something instead of disappear. That decision became MAVTG — the only medical travel company built by a dialysis patient, for dialysis patients. I learned how to travel on dialysis so you don't have to figure it out alone. I got on the national transplant waiting list and I kept going.
This book is everything I wish had existed before that day in the ICU. It's honest about the mistakes I made. It's real about what dialysis actually looks like. And it's direct about the path forward — because there is one, even when it doesn't feel like it. I wrote it for the person who just got a scary lab result and doesn't know what to do next. I wrote it for the Black man who hasn't been to the doctor in four years. I wrote it for the family member sitting in the waiting room with no answers. If any part of your story looks like mine, this book is for you.
