For this journalist, anything related to kidney disease is deeply personal. My mother died after years of dialysis, her kidney disease diagnosed far too late for meaningful intervention. Looking back, there are small things that stand out with painful clarity. One of them was that she hardly ever drank water. She simply never liked the taste, something I can remember from as far back as childhood. She also loved salt and used it generously on almost everything she ate. Doctors often warn that high salt intake can raise blood pressure, one of the leading causes of kidney damage.

On World Kidney Day, observed annually on March 12, health organisations highlight a condition that often receives little attention until serious damage has already occurred. The kidneys, two fist-sized organs, filter waste from the blood and help regulate blood pressure.

Kidney disease often develops without obvious symptoms in its early stages. By the time fatigue, swelling or other warning signs appear, significant damage may already have taken place. High blood pressure and diabetes are among the leading causes of kidney disease. Many people do not realise the strain these conditions can place on the kidneys over time.

When kidney function declines severely, treatment becomes complex and expensive. Dialysis can take over some of the kidneys’ work, but access to treatment is not always easy. For this reason, awareness remains important. High blood pressure and diabetes are often among the earliest warning signs that kidney disease may be developing.

As for us, our mother passed away on May 6, 2019, at Nelspruit MediClinic when she was still young by today’s standards, just a month after her 76th birthday. This after years of pain and suffering, and after having to move to Nelspruit from her home. Her home with her beloved enchanted garden and the blue-blue mountains of the Cape Overberg. With my sister in Nelspruit, my brother in Gauteng and me in Barberton at the time, the logistics simply did not allow us to leave our responsibilities and fly down every time doctors told us this was it and that we should come and say our goodbyes.

Today this Bolander is back in her own valley, in the same town our mom called home, my house quite literally around the corner. Whenever I drive past I cannot help but think how much she would have enjoyed having me here now, at 56, after many years of an eventful life that rarely stood still, finally settling down in one place in midlife.

My heart aches not because of the dying itself, as in the end death was a blessing, but because I cannot help thinking that these lost years might have been the years when we would have come to a deeper understanding of each other. Then again, that may simply be wishful thinking. Life tends to arrange perfect should-have and would-have decisions very neatly in retrospect in our minds, but rarely do the what-ifs and what might have been ever come to pass, if things had played out differently.

If this awareness piece does anything at all, let it be this: pay attention to the warning signs above before you, too, pay with your life.