ZURICH, SWITZERLAND: Tina Turner reportedly said she should have taken better care of her kidneys nearly two months before she died on Wednesday, May 24, at the age of 83. The "Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll” asked her fans and followers to show “love” to their kidneys in an Instagram post on March 9, on the occasion of International World Kidney Day. “Today is International World Kidney Day. Why is it important? Because kidneys fail without pain. And that's why I'm telling you today: Show your kidneys love! They deserve it,” the singer wrote at the time.
“My kidneys are victims of my not realising that my high blood pressure should have been treated with conventional medicine,” Turner said, adding, "I have put myself in great danger by refusing to face the reality that I need daily, lifelong therapy with medication. For far too long I believed that my body was an untouchable and indestructible bastion." She also shared a photo of herself featuring one of her own quotes that read, “If I had known how high blood pressure and kidney disease are connected, I would have been spared a lot of suffering.”
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Turner’s post was part of her support for the Show Your Kidney Love campaign launched on March 9 to spread more awareness about Chronic Kidney Disease. “Tina Turner has been suffering from Chronic Kidney Disease for many years, caused by high blood pressure, which she did not treat regularly with medication due to ignorance,” an article in the Tina Turner Blog read at the time. “She simply did not know the connection between the two diseases. Accordingly, it is important for her to educate and warn people,” the article added.
A look into Tina Turner’s struggle with kidney disease
The story of Turner’s battle with kidney disease was detailed in the ‘Show Your Kidney Love’ campaign. The rock legend revealed she was diagnosed with hypertension in 1978 but considered high blood pressure normal and “didn’t really try to control it.” She only took prescription pills once a day as advised by a doctor in 1985. It was after she had a stroke in 2009 that she learned her kidneys do not work any longer. At the time they had already lost 35% of their function.
“I tried to learn more about these organs’ function and meaning. Most people probably don’t even know where their kidneys are located and what they are for until their health is at stake,” she said, adding, "I continued to be on prescriptions for controlling my hypertension. But I was convinced that they made me feel even worse. With time I developed a fatal dislike of these pills. I remembered relishing life before I started taking them and wished I could be as clear headed and energetic as I used to be."
“When a friend suggested a different approach and recommended a homeopathic doctor in France, I didn’t hesitate. He replaced my conventional medication by homeopathic medicine. And I was told to always drink, drink, drink. Indeed, I started feeling better after a while,” the multi-Grammy winner continued before revealing that her doctors were unaware of her new experiment. “I had not told my doctors about my experiment, and when my next routine check-up was due, I was excited to see if the homeopathic medication had decreased my blood pressure and improved my kidney function,” she added.
“Rarely in my life had I been so wrong. I had not known that uncontrolled hypertension would worsen my renal disease and that I would kill my kidneys by giving up on controlling my blood pressure,” Turner revealed. “I never would have replaced my medication by the homeopathic alternatives if I had had an idea how much was at stake for me. Thanks to my naivety I had ended up at the point where it was about life or death,” she mentioned.
Turner also stated that the symptoms she presumed to be side effects of the medication were signs of her kidney disease being in its final stage. “How could it occur to me to make treatment decisions all by myself? If I had had any idea about the risk I was taking I would never have taken any chance on alternative medicine. The doctors made it very clear that the consequences of my decision were irreversible. My kidney function had reached its all-time low,” she shared.
Tina Turner had to undergo dialysis
Turner had to undergoing dialysis to survive at the time. “In order to survive, I had to start dialysis. It was my only option, but it was depressing to be connected to a machine for hours,” the singer shared, adding, “For the next nine months, all my life was about dialysis. I realized that the struggle for healing is always also a struggle for accurate information. For example, I had not been aware that chronic kidney failure is called “silent killer” because symptoms do not become noticeable until 80 percent of renal tissue is lost."
“As it happened to me, hypertension is one of the most frequent causes of kidney failure. I was lucky that Erwin offered to donate one of his kidneys to me. It was the first step to kidney transplantation, a very complex procedure,” she noted.
While the 2017 surgery was successful, Turner’s medical struggles were far from over. She shared that her body event tried to “reject” the transplanted kidney and hence she required more hospital admissions. However, she continued to follow her doctors’ orders and said she trusted them and their therapies. The icon also opened up about her health struggles in her autobiography ‘My Love Story’ and encouraged readers to sign the organ donor register and save lives in the final chapter.
