Teen's dreams sidelined by kidney disease

Teen's dreams sidelined by kidney disease
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February 13, 2009 - 3:56 PM
BRIAN NEWSOME
THE GAZETTE

Splashed across Michael Noble's ribs in colorful blue ink is a tattoo that says, simply, "Love life."

Inches away is the object that helped inspire it: a plastic tube protruding from his abdomen.

At 19, the Colorado Springs teen is on home-administered dialysis, where the tube helps eliminate toxic fluids from the body. He is waiting for a kidney donor after a rare syndrome struck him more than a year ago.

Vestiges of Michael's old life remain. Cutouts from skateboarding magazines hang from his walls. A snowboard sits in the corner. On his computer, a screen saver rolls through pictures of a healthy boy making goofy faces and gestures with his friends.

But these share space with an armoire full of medical supplies and hospital-like equipment at his bedside.

Michael's plight began in January 2008, a few days after he turned 18. He was a senior at Air Academy High School and the year was shaping up to be everything an ambitious teen could hope for. He was mastering his Advanced Placement classes, working at Louie's Pizza, and setting his sights on the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he'd been accepted in the business school. Winter had arrived, and with it, snowboarding. Spring would bring prom, graduation and a laid-back course load for an upperclassman on the way out.

Then, he came down with what appeared to be the flu. He missed a few days of school. But this bug came uncontrollable nose bleeds. His father, a physician, took his blood pressure, which was dangerously high.

He went to Penrose Hospital, where he stayed for about a month. Michael was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder called Wegener's granulomatosis, which inflames the blood vessels and restricts blood flow to critical organs. It affects just 1 in every 20,000 to 30,000 people, and the cause is unknown, according to the Vasculitis Foundation. Although he recovered from the disease with aggressive medications, his kidneys did not.

Today, a year later, he spends most of his days at home. He's taken a couple of classes at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, but his life is more or less taken up with dialysis, which at times saps his strength and leaves him exhausted.

For eight months, he went to the DaVita Dialysis Center, where he'd spend four hours several times a week having his blood removed, cleaned and replaced, a process he says left him feeling as if he'd been hit by a truck. Today, he undergoes peritoneal dialysis, where a bag of solution is emptied into the abdomen via a tube, cleansing the blood and getting emptied. A machine processes his blood while he sleeps, and he does one daytime session manually. He takes about a dozen medications a day.

He tries to keep his chin up. On his birthday, he went snowboarding. He got his tattoo in January, when the doctor said it would not jeopardize his health. He spends his daytime dialysis session listening to music, checking Facebook or watching a movie.

But at times he gets down. "My sister just graduated from medical school, and my parents are all proud of her, and I'm just stuck."

Michael is looking for a donor, because none of his family members are eligible.

Kidney disease is not unusual, and in fact has been rising in recent years, according to Dr. Jesse A. Flaxenburg, a kidney specialist with Pikes Peak Nephrologists. But few patients are as young as Michael. There were only 14 out of 1 million people under 20 diagnosed with kidney failure in 2005, the latest numbers available. In comparison,122 out of a million were age 20 to 44, and more than 3,100 were 65 and older.

With family ruled out as donors, Michael is looking for an altruistic live donor who will pass the extensive tests that determine whether someone makes a match.

Michael hopes medical science will help him get his plans back. Yet whatever happens, he says the ordeal has stripped away any hint of teenage rebellion and angst and left a stronger person.

"I just feel, like, closer to God now; I pray every night. No more hatred in my life. I just love all my friends and my family. I'm just patiently waiting to get better."

Contact the writer: 636-0198 or brian.newsome@gazette.com

http://www.gazette.com/articles/blood_48055___article.html/dialysis_michael.html