Have you had any discussions about your lifestyle so exercise, diet, smoking, drinking with any health professionals?

Well I don’t smoke and I hardly drink at all so no not really [laughs]. Exercise certainly because I do that but no, I haven’t needed no. Weight loss is always a problem because I don’t move very easily. But this is where the gym is a huge improvement because I can’t walk. I can ride an exercise bike, so I do that.

Mm and have you been advised on food, diet, what to eat?

Oh god yes. I know all the rules; it’s following them that’s the problem! [laughs] yes.

And is that something you just know from, you know, your own information gathering or is it something that the nurse or the doctor has discussed with you?

I’ve been- I’ve been going to classes on and off, various groups for years so that’s why I know all the rules.

Do you mean dieting type of classes?

Yes so and the best one I’ve been to is the Rosemary Conley diet and fitness group, local one in [suburb] and I lost four stone. And then I hurt my back and gradually it crept back on again because I couldn’t exercise. That’s the same story everybody gives you, I’m sure.

But hasn’t your GP or nurse haven’t particularly sat you down and talked about what you should eat or avoid?

No because she knows I know.

Mm. Have you been given any advice on keeping up your fluid intake or avoiding salt?

Well not specifically no. But again, I mean I know that! Theres plenty of information on the television and in the shops and what not. And my husband and we try to keep a low salt diet for him so because hes been told to keep salt down so we do. In fact we have a lower salt diet than a lot- I don’t like prepared foods; you know that you can buy because it always tastes salty so were always having less salt than they are.

Mm so you’re cooking from fresh?

Mm oh yes, yes. Not for the last month while my kitchen’s being put in but yes.

Have you had advice on keeping your fluid level up, making sure you drink enough?

Well, I drink plenty.

You drink plenty anyway, do you?

Yeah.

But you haven’t been told explicitly that that’s what you should do.

No. no, no.

Have you been given any guidance on what to eat, diet, that sort of thing.

No.

By a doctor or a nurse.

No special diet.

And you’ve not have some sort of general consultation or some leaflets about healthy eating from your doctor?

No, no. I cook what I want, when I want and what I want.

[Laughs]

And I eat it, everything that I fancy.

And would you say that you eat a healthy diet? or just an enjoyable diet?

What I eat I enjoy and other people enjoy it too [laughs].

[Laughs] You sometimes cook for friends as well?

Yeah and my daughter comes here every Saturday, she and her partner.

And my grandchildren, great-grandchildren come in here and when I tend to bake bread for them all, that sort of thing.

I also tried various different types of therapies, I had homeopathy for a bit, I went to a herbalist for a bit, but I think actually the most important thing that I did as regards to complementary, well for anything really, was I went, I got therapy, which I tried to get on the National Health but the only thing they would give me on the National Health was joining a group of people with kidney disease. And I decided I didn’t want to do that because if I saw people that had failed it would make me believe that I, that’s all that was going to happen to me, and I didn’t want to do that; I didn’t, I wanted to believe that I wasn’t going to have kidney failure and therefore hopefully I wouldn’t.

So I had private therapy, I had therapy from somebody who was training, so it was cheap at the time, cheaper, and then it got more expensive. And I actually think that was really, really important. And the thing that I think might have helped to cause my kidney disease was that I was a very nervous person. I’m a lot less nervous now, but I was very nervous for most of my life, and still was nervous at the time when my kidney disease was diagnosed. So I think that fear, that constant fear may have damaged my kidneys because my body was in constant fear and therefore, you know, it affected them. Whether that’s right or not I don’t know but that’s my , what I believe or I think could have helped to cause it, and my therapy concentrated on that, so has helped me quite a lot.

And so with that and taking blood pressure tablets, I don’t seem to have changed very much in the 16 years. I had a little panic about five years ago when it seemed that my creatinine was getting more, it seemed like I was getting, my kidneys were getting worse, and I then went to get acupuncture and I’ve been having acupuncture ever since, which isn’t as bad as it seems – it doesn’t actually hurt to put the needles in, it’s when they tweak them, they tweak the needles and you go, Oh. And I get that about every six weeks, and in a way you don’t know whether it’s doing anything but I think acupunctures good for me anyway and she seems to help with other things.

And one of the things that my, my wife and I have been interested in for a long time is alternative medicine. Not because were nut cases, not because were, you know, completely into living an alternatively but because we haven’t always found the treatments available to us on the Health Service effective, so we turned elsewhere. And also because we didn’t actually find in the interviews that the GPs provide necessarily the level of interest in us as people that when you go to an alternative practitioner particularly the one that we did go to they were shown. And so we actually found from a man in Chinese medicine that he was able to sort out problems that [my wife] had, problems that [my wifes] friends had, and also problems that I had over a number of years prior to 2005. When hed particularly, I have chronic headaches for about four or five years, I got a job when I was working here in, where I live now, I started to get these, these headaches every afternoon.

And then when I went down to London they got worse and also I started to have a prostate condition. Anyway, through various ways this man this practitioner treated me. And in the end after about four or five years – because it’s always slow, you know it’s not a, not invasive, the invasion it’s actually, it’s working with the body to try and generate a curative response from within the body – the headaches went. And I am completely convinced that it was due to the treatment. So I was confident in that treatment. But I had, because I’m a very open person, I had actually talked to the, well both to, at the renal unit and in the, in meetings with the doctors in the surgery. I explained to them clearly that I was, you, I was occasionally using alternative medicines. Now that went down extremely badly in the renal unit and went extremely badly with the GP.

And yet I remained confident and optimistic that I could maintain my health by not doing, as so many people at my age will do, that is relying on, on prescribed medicines, you know, I didn’t want to do that. And so in dealing with blood pressure and in dealing with the blood in urine, but more, most particularly with blood pressure, I was very keen to do that through exercise and through diet and through meditation and through all various things. So there was a conflict that particularly with the doctor who says that he told me about CKD because he was very opposed to all of, oh to that way of, well, to that alternative medicine. And I used the word, in fact, I said alternative and I found that’s the wrong word to use, it should be complementary because of course it wasn’t alternative, it was complementary. And it was always complementary. And I never went exclusively to ooh to the one, I used both. But of course western medicine wants to be exclusive and wants to actually dismiss these alternative, the, the alternatives which are also complementary.

Do you use any over the counter medications or complementary therapies?

No because now I’ve had a terrible attack of catarrh and I went to the chemist and said what would he advise? Could I take this, that and the other. And he said, No, you can’t take any of them. So I am limited to what I can take and I always ask the pharmacist.

Well, not always because I, that was the one and only time I think I wanted something and he was adamant that, he said, you know, I don’t think you can take that bit, you can speak to your GP about it. But the pharmacist here is so good that I decided that I’ve just got to suffer it and it comes and goes.

So you’re quite careful now with what other medications you’re taking.

Yes, I wouldn’t take any medications without advice because it doesn’t, they do interfere I think with things.