Kidney disease, eating and cooking

Living with kidney disease, means that eating food can become a bit of a chore and a bit of  a hassle and cooking is even more of a challenge. I had many restrictions of what I could eat and drink, my main restriction was I was only allowed 1 litre of fluid a day. That was very difficult because I was constantly thirsty. The other main restriction was that I couldn't eat salt because that would make me more thirsty and I would retain fluid which would have to be taken off during dialysis, but keeping the balance right was difficult and any extra fluid go on our lungs or heart which give us shortness of breath. This could cause a lot of issues and make you awful as well as be dangerous.

The worst thing about kidney disease is that we would not be allowed to eat certain food such as, tomatoes, avacardos, bananas, chocolate, coffee, raw veg, dried fruit, nuts, mushrooms, exotic fruit, potatoes, marmite, hot chocolate,kidney beans, baked beans, pulses and sauces with high salt. Other veg had to be boiled to reduce the potassium and also reduced phosphates, cheese, milk, cola, seafood, processed food, pizza, ice cream, custard. I had also had to reduce my salt, so a lot of gravys and sauces where ruled out.

This means that cooking vegetables would have to be boiled and then cooked in a pan or roast them after but it mean a lot of the flavour and nutrients was lost. We had to cook a lot of our own food to limit all the restricted

We made home made food that was lower in the restrictions. This meal produced 4 portions. These worst part was not being able to eat most of the Christmas food, as most of it was restricted.

Life is very different now, I'm 26 days post transplant and all but a few restrictions have been lifted. I can't have grapefruit,pomegranate,star fruit, unpasteurised cheese, pate and smoked salmon. The first few days I couldn't decide what to eat. I think my first breakfast was a BLT, I hadn't had one in such a long time, it was delicious. Now cooking seems fun again and I can't wait to try a new recipe. It's going to be stuffed pumkin baked in the oven. Yes no carving pumpkins here it will be delicious!

foods.