I'm just really, really thankful. I'm thankful to the doctors; I'm thankful to the family that donated the kidney.

I was born three weeks early, and I kept being ill. From the age of zero to four, I was always in hospital having tests done, but they couldn't find out what was wrong. They discovered that one of my kidneys wasn't working properly, and it had scarred. I had to have 32 injections in my arm in the morning and evening to try and make me better.

When I was a child, I was unable to go to any type of sleepaway summer camp because of health issues. Once I learned about the Lopez Foundation, I knew I wanted to get involved, send kids with kidney disease away to camp so they can still experience overnight camp with medical needs at hand.

There's a popular concept of 'intelligence' as book smarts, like calculus or chess, as opposed to, say, social skills. So people say that 'it takes more than intelligence to succeed in human society.' But social skills reside in the brain, not the kidneys.

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me - like food or water.

Twenty million more have Chronic Kidney Disease, where patients experience a gradual deterioration of kidney function, the end result of which is kidney failure.

African Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but comprise 32 percent of patients treated for kidney failure, giving them a kidney failure rate that is 4.2 times greater than that of white Americans.

Left unchecked, diabetes can have a devastating impact on your body and can lead to blindness, heart disorder, kidney failure, limb amputation, as well as the possibility of lifelong dialysis.

I was pretty bad. When I first was diagnosed with kidney failure, my function - the function of my kidney was less than 8 percent.

For diabetes in particular, we know there's a relationship between lack of glucose regulation and complications like blindness and kidney failure. So if you were diabetic and you knew that you could get your glucose in a tight, normal range just by adjusting your lifestyle, wouldn't that be great?

I lost my father. He had diabetes and high BP and so he died of kidney failure.

I already had high blood pressure. I have hypertension. And I think the chemo was just too much for my kidneys. And they went into failure. And that was September 12th of 2008. And the doctor rushed me right to the hospital.

I was a diabetic for 16 years, since I was 14. Being that I lost weight, no more diabetes. You don't have to lose your eyesight, cut off your toes, have a stroke, get kidney failure. You just have to lose weight - you know - for most of the diabetes.

I have a slight addiction to Diet Coke, and, of course, I absolutely shouldn't touch it because it makes the kidneys work really hard.

We have equated a cancer diagnosis to 'death,' but we look at diabetes as 'something that you get when you get older.' But look at diabetes - it's the leading cause of limb amputation, heart disease, kidney failure. Many people don't equate diabetes with these other destructive things. I didn't equate it to those until I started reading about it.

I was in kidney failure. I ended up having a kidney transplant on my 21st birthday.

It was the nicest thing she could imagine. It made her want to have his babies and give him both of her kidneys.

One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever --or not?

When I was a child I was unable to go to any type of sleepaway summer camp because of health issues. Once I learned about the Lopez Foundation I knew I wanted to get involved send kids with kidney disease away to camp so they can still experience overnight camp with medical needs at hand.

With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys leaving an ugly wound.

In fact when you combine stem cell technology with the technology known as tissue engineering you can actually grow up entire organs so as you suggest that sometime in the future you get in an auto accident and lose your kidney we'd simply take a few skin cells and grow you up a new kidney. In fact this has already been done.

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs my kidneys my liver my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.

Twenty million more have Chronic Kidney Disease where patients experience a gradual deterioration of kidney function the end result of which is kidney failure.

African Americans make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but comprise 32 percent of patients treated for kidney failure giving them a kidney failure rate that is 4.2 times greater than that of white Americans.