Alberta man advocates for early testing amid rising kidney disease rates in Canada

By the time signs of kidney disease show up, it can sometimes be too late. There are calls for increased screening to detect early warning signs.

An Alberta man is advocating for early testing of chronic kidney disease amid rising mortality rates in Canadians because access to testing and information is what saved his life.

Sean Delaney was born in Red Deer and lost his left kidney by the time he was three months old. Right before he turned 27, his right kidney began failing. His younger brother, Peter, became his first living donor.

“It was a huge game-changer,” Delaney recalled. “It allowed me to see my daughters go all the way through their schooling years, it allowed me to finish a master’s degree very shortly after my transplant, and just travel and have no limitations, really.”

Transplant recipients do take a slew of medications to keep the immune system suppressed and lower the chance of a rejected organ, he said, but he remarked it was nothing compared to how he was feeling pre-transplant.

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Delaney’s transplant failed, though, in 2017. He was put on dialysis for more than a year until a woman named Brenda heard his story through a mutual friend and became his second living donor in 2020.

“I think the most insidious part of kidney disease ... is that, for the most part, you don’t even know you have a problem until you’re down to 20 per cent kidney function,” he said.

Living with chronic kidney disease his whole life gave Delaney fine-tuned intuition for knowing when his transplant had failed. He described fatigue, upset stomach and food tasting terrible because of a metallic taste in his mouth.

But Delaney, along with other advocates and doctors, says not everyone can read the signs before it’s too late.

Chronic kidney disease has been labelled an “invisible killer” by the Kidney Foundation Canada for its rising mortality rate.

According to Marcello Tonelli, a medical professor from the University of Calgary, Canada’s mortality rate from chronic kidney disease has risen by 70 per cent since 1990.

A study he collaborated on in medical journal The Lancet suggests “best data” approximates one in 10 Canadians are currently living with chronic kidney disease.

“What (that) tells us is that people who have kidney disease already, we’re failing them. We’re not detecting them in time,” Tonelli told CTV News.

The Kidney Foundation of Canada says a simple blood or urine test can be enough to find warning signs and could contribute to a national framework for early detection of kidney disease.

Carrie Thibodeau with the foundation said there may be several reasons why mortality rates for kidney disease are rising, including an aging population or other related diseases like diabetes or hypertension.

Still, she said it’s “critical” to intervene early.

“If we diagnose people earlier and we intervene earlier, then we have the opportunity to prevent people from ever needing dialysis or a transplant,” she said.

Most people, she explained, don’t develop symptoms of kidney disease until a late stage, meaning early screening could mean the difference between life and death.

Delaney, now 54 years old, knows the difference now, and will tell anyone he meets that “life is limited.” Just last month, he finished hiking through parts of Portugal and Spain.

“I walked nearly 200 kilometres, and the first text I sent when I got to the very end of it was to my second donor, Brenda. I said, ‘We made it.’ Not ‘I made it,’” he said.

“There are lots of things I couldn’t have done without my brother’s kidney, and I couldn’t have done this without her kidney.”

With files from CTV News National’s Kathy Le and CTV News Edmonton’s Darcy Seaton and Gates Guarin