Raising awareness on International Kidney Day, the legendary singer opened about her regret for not taking care of her kidneys by neglecting treatment for her high blood pressure in a March Instagram post.
AceShowbiz –Tina Turner opened up about her battle with kidney disease in a lengthy Instagram post, two months before she died. The legendary singer, who passed away on Wednesday, May 24 after a “long illness,” admitted before her death that she put herself in “great danger” by not taking care of her kidneys.
In the post shared in honor of International Kidney Day on March 9, the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll wrote, “My kidneys are victims of my not realising that my high blood pressure should have been treated with conventional medicine. I have put myself in great danger by refusing to face the reality that I need daily, lifelong therapy with medication.” She added, “For far too long I believed that my body was an untouchable and indestructible bastion.”
In an accompanying blog post for ShowYourKidneysLove.com, Tina revealed that she was diagnosed with hypertension in 1978. “I have been suffering from hypertension for a long time, got diagnosed in 1978, but didn’t care much about it,” she admitted. “I can’t remember ever getting an explanation about what high blood pressure means or how it affects the body. I considered high blood pressure my normal. Hence, I didn’t really try to control it. In 1985 a doctor gave me a prescription for pills of which I was supposed to take one a day, and that was it. I didn’t give it any more thought.”
It wasn’t until she suffered a stroke in 2009 because of her “poorly controlled hypertension” that she realized how serious her health issue was. “I struggled to get back up on my feet,” she shared. “This is when I first learned that my kidneys didn’t work that well anymore. They had already lost thirty-five percent of their function.”
“I continued to be on prescriptions for controlling my hypertension. But I was convinced that they made me feel even worse. With time I developed a fatal dislike of these pills,” Tina continued. So without consulting with her doctors, she “replaced” her “conventional medication” with “homeopathic” remedies.
The 12-time Grammy winner said she “started feeling better after a while,” but she was in for a rude awakening when she went for her “next routine check-up.” She confessed, “Rarely in my life had I been so wrong. I had not known that uncontrolled hypertension would worsen my renal disease and that I would kill my kidneys by giving up on controlling my blood pressure.”
“I never would have replaced my medication by the homeopathic alternatives if I had had an idea how much was at stake for me,” she expressed her regret. “Thanks to my naivety I had ended up at the point where it was about life or death.”
Tina’s doctors “made it very clear” that the “consequences” of her decision were “irreversible,” informing her that her kidney function “had reached its all-time low.” She was left with “only option” which was to “start dialysis.” She, indeed, was on dialysis for nine months, “but it was depressing to be connected to a machine for hours,” she lamented.
Then her second husband Erwin Bach “offered to donate one of his kidneys” to her. Though she felt “lucky,” she admitted that the “very complex procedure” in April 2017 was followed by months of “never ending up[s] and down[s],” as her “body tried to reject the donor kidney as it frequently happens after a transplantation.”
“Every so often this required more hospital admissions. I kept feeling nauseous and dizzy, forgot things, and was scared a lot. These problems are still not quite resolved,” she shared at the time, adding, “I am on multiple prescriptions and take great care to follow my doctors’ orders meticulously.”
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