Cysts and Courage: PKD Living Stories

Inside this volume

Fifty first-person accounts describe living with polycystic kidney disease. Writers describe finding out — a parent's diagnosis, a scan for something else, a screening offered at eighteen — and the decades of watchful waiting that follow. There is the cuff on the table and the blood pressure control that does more for the long term than anything else, the eGFR watched like a stock price, and the long middle where nothing much happens and everything is anticipated. Writers describe pain, cyst haemorrhage and infection, kidneys that grow until they change the shape of a body, and tolvaptan with the extraordinary thirst it brings. Later chapters cover dialysis, transplant and living donation from both sides, the ethics and grief of family testing and reproductive decisions, the aneurysm screening nobody expects, and the cases where things did not hold.

Who it's for

For families living with inherited PKD, people newly diagnosed or approaching dialysis, potential donors, and anyone weighing genetic testing for their children.

Format · Instant download · PDF & EPUB · Fifty first-person accounts · PDF: 283 pages

A collection of personal testimony, offered as companion reading — not medical advice.

• 50 single-author testimonies from real people
• A short, plain-language introduction to the topic
• Editor's note, contents page, and curated resource list
• Professional interior typesetting and an original cover

Every purchase includes a print-quality PDF (best for desktop, tablet, and printing) and a reflowable EPUB (best for Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, and phones). Files are DRM-free. You can download both instantly from the order-confirmation screen, and we email them to your inbox as well, so your books are always within reach.