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Individuals with kidney disease who are able to obtain treatment early experience a higher quality of life and are able to maintain more of their day-to-day activities, including keeping their jobs.

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.

Dialysis does not make patients well. It simply postpones their deaths.

I was diagnosed with hypertension when I was 24, and I battled hypertension for about 10 to 12 years, and then I went to the doctor for something else, and he found that I had high levels of protein in my urine, and that's how I found out I had kidney disease.

A patient healthy enough to undergo a kidney transplant might someday no longer need dialysis. That would free up a slot for a new patient.

Kidney disease is a low-profile, unglamorous problem, a disease that disproportionately strikes minorities and the poor. Its celebrity spokesman is blue-collar comedian George Lopez, who received a kidney from his wife.

I think many people with a chronic illness would prefer not to have their chronic illness, simply because it's high maintenance.

Living with a single kidney is almost exactly like living with two; the remaining kidney expands to take up the slack. (When kidneys fail, they generally fail together; barring trauma or cancer, there's not much advantage to a backup.) The main risk to the donor is the risk of any surgery.

In the United States, Western Europe and Japan, there is widespread access to dialysis, most of it publicly funded. But in many countries, the majority of patients who need dialysis die without it.

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