Ruth, a 45-year-old woman, has been suffering from a recent bout of ill health. Initially, she suffered from frequent headaches, chills and fever, for which she received infusion treatment for relief. However, to recover her health more quickly, Ms Lee decided on her own, in addition to the doctor's advice, to take one additional Anacin medicine per day, together with three packets of Ibuprofen granules, for three consecutive days.
Unexpectedly, on the fourth day, instead of improving, Ruth's health condition developed new discomforts - she felt unusually weak all over her body and lost her appetite, making it difficult for her to swallow almost any food. More worryingly, she found that her urine output decreased significantly, only about 600ml a day, and the colour of her urine was abnormal, as dark as strong tea. Noticing the serious abnormality in her body, Ms Li immediately went to the hospital. After a series of thorough examinations, the doctor told her the shocking news: she was diagnosed with acute renal failure caused by drug overdose and improper use. This diagnosis made Ms Li realise that her original hope of speeding up her recovery by increasing the dosage of her medication had put her health in great danger.
In our daily lives, such stories may be commonplace, but often as a calm lake under the hidden undercurrent, most people do not notice its turbulence. Until the ‘cold medicine mix and match into poison, innocent kidneys were hit hard’ This kind of news reminds everyone, that the original, drug kidney injury this ‘invisible killer’, is quietly lurking around us, not far from everyone.
Drugs, the modern medical ‘magical wizard’, can wave the magic wand at the critical moment, dispersing the pain, so that we regain the light of health. But this magician also has its capricious side, if not used properly, or mistakenly into the wrong ‘spell combination’, it may turn into a destroyer, of our body's vital organs - kidneys, launching a fierce attack. Analgesics, the seemingly gentle guardians of pain relief, are a hidden secret. They are like a double-edged sword, one side soothing the anger of pain, but the other side may inadvertently, in the kidneys of this ‘field of life’ on the sowing of seeds of damage. When these seeds take root and spread, the function of the kidneys will start to decline gradually, just like a flourishing forest being eroded quietly, losing its vitality and vigour in the past.
Kidneys, like the super cleaners in our body, it is not only responsible for cleaning the body's ‘rubbish’, but also responsible for dealing with a variety of drugs we eat, to ensure that they do not wander around in the body. But you know what? This hard-working cleaner, sometimes also becomes a drug ‘target’, and gets hurt.
When our bodies consume too many antipyretics, such as those little pills used to reduce fever and pain, the kidneys will be like cleaners overwhelmed by rubbish, exhausted, or even malfunctioning. Drugs like acetaminophen, indomethacin, and ibuprofen with names that sound a bit tongue-twisting are supposed to pass through the great channel of the kidneys and exit the body without incident when they have completed their mission. But sometimes, they will be in the kidneys, ‘stay away’, more and more, like sand, slowly piled up into dunes, and ultimately overwhelming the kidneys with this ‘castle’. In this way, the kidneys may be injured and various problems may occur, such as the renal papillae becoming like wilted flowers, losing vitality; or the inside of the kidneys becoming as complicated as a labyrinth, leading to chronic interstitial nephritis, and more serious cases may also develop into renal failure, which is like a city losing its water supply system, and becoming precarious.
Therefore, when we are faced with illness and pain and desire a quick recovery, we must not forget that medicines also have certain side effects. Each drug is a ‘visitor’ that needs to be treated with care, their dosage, usage, and matching, all need to follow the doctor's instructions, to ensure that they can play its magic of healing, and not become a blade to harm us. Let's be vigilant and guard our precious kidney health!
