I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: News Articles => Topic started by: okarol on October 17, 2008, 10:22:57 AM
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After health scares, Natalie Cole changes breakneck pace
By Kelley L. Carter, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — Natalie Cole was worried she'd be forgettable.
The singer had known for months that something wasn't quite right physically. It wasn't until she was sprawled out on the floor of her New York hotel room last month, barely breathing, that she was forced to figure out what was ailing her. She was in the middle of a heavy schedule of appearances to promote her new album, Still Unforgettable, which like 1991's Unforgettable … With Love features a virtual duet (Walkin' My Baby Back Home) with her late father, Nat King Cole.
After Cole, 58, checked into a hospital for tests, doctors told her she had fluid in her lungs and 10% kidney function.
"I could have been dead," the eight-time Grammy winner says, sitting in the living room of her high rise dressed in charcoal gray slacks and a matching sweater set, her hair cropped and her face made up. "The volume of work that I've had before, I can't do it. Instead of 90-minute shows, maybe I'll only do 60. Instead of dancing around the stage, maybe I'll just walk elegantly."
The most recent health scare came on the heels of her announcement in July that she had been diagnosed with hepatitis C (a liver virus), probably the result of years of intravenous heroin use in the '70s and '80s.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: New York | Grammy | Maria | Yellow Pages | Nat King Cole | Natalie Cole | Still Unforgettable | Tena Clark | Unforgettable With Love
To treat it, she was receiving weekly injections of interferon (a drug also used with cancer patients), which was rough on her body. She lost her appetite, hair and 15 pounds. At the same time, she was finishing her album and gearing up for a tour, later canceled.
Days after the album's release, she was told she needed dialysis three days a week. Since getting out of the hospital, she's stopped taking interferon, but the dialysis continues for now.
In more than three decades of friendship, says her former personal assistant Benita Hill Johnson, Cole has never had worse than a head cold.
"Natalie thinks that she can't be defeated in anything," Hill Johnson says. "Her biggest disappointment is that she's going to have to slow down."
Cole is hoping to get her doctor's approval to do a few concerts here and there; she's itching to get back on the road, even if that means dramatically changing her set.
"I'm getting stronger every day. As much as I don't like dialysis, it absolutely is giving me the strength and the endurance that I need, so I'm happy for that," Cole says. She pauses to kiss goodbye to her mother, Maria, who says she needs to look into her daughter's eyes to see that she's healthy.
Cole doesn't love the idea of getting dialysis while traveling for work, "but it is what it is, you know?"
It'll be a different life on the road, but those who know her best doubt that fans will notice the difference.
Given where Cole is now, "I don't know that people expect Natalie to run across a stage," says Tena Clark, her album's executive producer. "Her voice is still gorgeous. Natalie could sing the Yellow Pages and people would sit there on the edge of their seats."
http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2008-10-16-natalie-cole_N.htm?csp=34
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I saw her a few weeks ago on The View and she looked tired. She was out of breath and explained about the Hep C and treatments. It must have been shortly after that show that they diagnosed the kidney failure. I loved her Dad. No one could sing like Nat King Cole.
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If she is "itching to get back on the road" I suggest she take her binders! I admire her spirit but she will soon find out what we all do. Dialysis Sucks!
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Posted on Fri, Oct. 24, 2008
Singer Cole may need kidney transplant
Grammy-winner Natalie Cole, who this month spent a week in a New York hospital, reveals that she may need a kidney transplant.
In a two-part chat with Mary Hart on "Entertainment Tonight," set to air tonight and Friday, Cole, 58, who in July announced she had hepatitis C, says doctors told her her kidney was damaged.
"They told me... 'Your lungs have filled up with fluid and your kidney is functioning at 10 percent,' " Cole says. "I was in denial that I was close to dying until after three to four days of being hospitalized and them putting me on dialysis."
Doctors are unsure about her prognosis. "The kidneys could repair themselves, but we still don't know," Cole says. "We're looking at a possible transplant. My son and sister have already volunteered."
http://www.kansas.com/entertainment/story/571238.html