The Beginning of the Beginning

I guess the story really begins the summer of 1999. Bryce already had his mission call and was getting ready to leave. He had been having some pain in his joints that would come and go. They went to their family doctor in Preston who diagnosed it as tendonitis. He prescribed a pill, Bryce went home and took it, rested on the couch and in a couple hours the pain was gone. He went on his mission and had it return for a day or two from time to time, but it never got too bad or stayed around too long.

He got back from his mission the summer of 2001 and it flared up big time. He had it in his elbows, knees, feet, ankles. Several times it got so bad he couldn't get out of bed or do anything. All through this time he would take NSAID's (Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs or Advil/Ibuprofen) for the pain. One evening in August it was bugging him as he helped to install the Cooks sprinkler system and they sent home home early to rest. A couple days later they were back at the Cooks and playing basketball outside. Bryce's Dad handed him a mini-basketball and asked him to shoot a basket from the free throw line. Bryce told him he wasn't sure he could, his Dad told him to just try. It only made it about halfway to the basket. (Side note: Anyone who knows Bryce knows he was really hurting if he couldn't make it to the basket! He is super competitive in sports and games. So much so that he doesn't believe in letting little kids win whenever he plays a game or race with them.) His Dad said "This isn't right. A kid your age should not be having this kind of pain or health problems. We need to get this looked at right away." Wanting to know what was going on and how to get it to stop, Bryce agreed.

They went to see a Doctor of Internal Medicine at the hospital in Logan a few days later. He said he wasn't sure what it was, ordered bloodwork and sent them to another internist. The second internist said it could be rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or something kidney related. He suggested they rule out RA first and if they determined it wasn't that, then they would look into it being the kidney. As they were leaving they stopped by the front desk (probably to get some info or make a follow up appointment) and Bryce said the doctor came running out to them. He showed them the numbers from his bloodwork and said "See this number here? That's your uric acid amount, and it is very high. I don't know how I missed it before, but that points to it being kidney related. I'm going to refer you to Dr. Senekjian, who is a nephrologist." (Nephrologist is a kidney doctor/specialist)

Bryce had his appointment with Dr. Senekjian, they looked at his bloodwork numbers and talked about his symptoms. He said he thought the joint pain was gout, which is when your kidney stops filtering out the uric acid and it builds up in your joints and crystallizes (like bone spurs). He wanted Bryce to have a kidney biopsy to see it's function. The biopsy was a painful, horrible experience (I am so glad I didn't have to be there! They basically stick you with a big needle that is like an apple corer and take out a chunk of your kidney for analysis) and required a stay in the hospital for a few days until he recovered. Of course his joint pain during this time was horrible, so they drew some fluid off his ankle to determine if it was in fact gout. The biopsy showed a large amount of scar tissue on the kidney with limited kidney function, with an official name for his kidney failure being chronic interstitial nephritis; the other test showed the pain in his joints was gout. They are still unsure what caused his kidneys to fail. Dr. Senekjian told him to stop taking NSAID's for the pain no matter how bad it got, and to do regular blood tests so they could see how things kept going with his kidney.

By July of 2004, his tests showed his kidney function was low enough Dr. Senekjian said he thought it was time to put Bryce's name on the transplant list and get things moving in that direction. By this point Bryce was back in school at BYU-Idaho. He would get gout a lot and missed class frequently because of it. He said he remembers one week in particular it was so bad and he went home and his Mom took care of him and did everything for him. 

Around Thanksgiving time Bryce came home and saw his Mom and JoDee Cook visiting at the table. His Mom told him LaWrell Cook was a match and wanted to donate.

I've included some helpful links to terms that might be new to some of you. Sometimes I forget because they are so commonplace to us. And some of them are too involved to explain them as I bring them up. They are the blue underlined words in the post. Click on them for more info.