This weekend my husband (Neil), son (Paul, my recipient), and I participated in our umpteenth National Kidney Foundation Triangle Kidney Walk [see my post on our long history of kidney walks], in Durham, NC. We were thrilled to learn that it set a record for donations: more than $97,000, with money still coming in. I think it broke another record, too–this may have been the coldest one (I know it’s the only time I’ve ever worn a winter coat over my Kidney Walk tee shirt).

Because of the damp chilly weather, the Walk organizers decided to shorten the route. What was supposed to be a 2.4-mile loop was reduced to just 1 mile total. True, my fingers were numb even before it was over, but we were still a bit disappointed.

It was long enough though to fall into conversation with a woman doing her first Walk. She’d driven all the way from the Pinehurst area because her mother had died recently from kidney failure, and she felt she had to do something. Like so many of us, she’d known very little about kidney disease before her mother started dialysis 4 years before. A few family members had planned to come along, she said with a little annoyance, but one by one they’d backed out. To her credit she came alone.

We talked about how little is known about kidney disease and how important it is to focus more attention on education in addition to research. We learned a startling statistic before the walk started: the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which is the main source of health-related research in this country, spends $568 per patient/year on cancer research. Kidney disease research accounts for…$29 per patient/year! I thought I’d heard it wrong and had to double-check before finalizing this post. And yet chronic kidney disease affects more than 30 million Americans. It’s yet another reminder of how important that new public awareness campaign is [see my previous post].

We saw lots of familiar smiling faces at the walk, many peering out from under wool hats. Friends from Donate Life NC/WELD (Women Encouraging Living Donation) were working a table this year. One of them, Dolores McGrath, a fellow NKF Kidney Advocacy Committee member, would be joining me for my first “official” visit to the state legislature this week. (More on that in my next post!)