A Story About My Kidneys

This post is for people who have kidney disease or know people who do. It is not a suggestion as to what to do, but it is my story. Several years ago I had an intestinal ulcer burst, requiring immediate surgery that removed 3 liters of poison from my insides--poison released when the ulcer i knew nothing about burst. That was followed by two more stomach surgeries, cut from solar plexis to below the naval.
There was considerable pain but I didn't want opioids, so the docs told me to take ibuprofin. I took 4-12 daily for a couple of years, and then the flesh eating virus hit my legs and that was two more major operations and then skin grafting and more pain and more ibuprofin.
Three years ago, when I hit 65 my medicare kicked in and my leg doc, the brilliant surgeon Dr. Ford at Huguley Hospital in south Tarrant County, Texas, told me to get a full physical. So I did. And the guy looking at my kidneys said that I was down to 33 percent function as a result of the ibuprofin. No one had warned me, and I didn't think to look at the fine print on the labels. He told me that if it dipped much more I'd need dialysis and then a kidney transplant.
That blew me away.
Several months later the same doc said I was down to 27 percent function and we were getting near the point of no return.
I cut the ibuprofin out as much as possible--reduced it to 3 ibuprofin once a week or maybe twice, hoping that would not kill me. I continued to eat garlic with every meal (sauted in olive oil in almost everything, let's say a full head of it daily). And I did a lot of sapo, the frog medicine the indigenous Matses from the Amazon jungle had shared with me 33 years ago. I did small doses, but quite a few of them. The medicine comes from a particular frog and cleans out toxins from the body, among other things. Sometimes I did it for 5 days in a row, sometimes 3 days, and in small amounts--as opposed to what I used to do.
When I was back in the hospital in late February for eight days dealing with the return of the flesh eating bacteria, I was told my kidneys were operating at 66 percent. I could not believe it.
Now I've been back on antibiotics for the infection for more than 6 weeks and do not dare to use the Matses medicine at this time. I'm simply not strong enough and don't have the courage to test the limits at the moment. Nonetheless, my most recent blood work, from last Friday, was assessed by my infectious disease doc today and she said my kidneys were operating at 100 percent.
I double checked that with her three or four times: She insisted they were in the best shape possible.
Unfreaking real, right?
I can't say if it was that the first kidney specialist was simply wrong, or that cutting out the ibuprofin worked, or that the garlic tightened me up, or if the frog-sweat medicine did the job. But the difference between being told I should apply for a kidney transplant two years ago and being told I could sell a healthy kidney today is huge.
I can't promise this will help someone else, except to say work at it, stay strong and positive, clean up if you have to do that, and fine things sometimes happen. I'm very grateful to the universe and the Matses medicine every day, but today I'm singing even more thankfully.