Wilma MacKinnon’s need for a kidney transplant has progressed to the point where she has to have dialysis every night, but for a short time Thursday, the Aspy Bay woman felt young and fit.

“I’m like a teenager meeting a pop band, this is so exciting, it’s surreal. They’re all sweet,” said MacKinnon, 63, who got to spend a few minutes with the members of Canada’s men’s curling team before they played Italy.

MacKinnon’s daughter-in-law, Mandy Markie, didn’t realize what a huge curling fan MacKinnon is until she came for a visit last week to Markie’s home in Lakeside. As soon as the men’s world championship started at Scotiabank Centre in Halifax, that’s what was on the TV.

“She knows them all by name. As they’re curling, she’ll be like, oh, there goes so and so,” said Markie. “She was on the couch one night watching and said ‘I would love to get my picture taken with them.’ I offered to get tickets, but the walking around, the parking, the moving is a little much, so she just let it go. But I didn’t.

I started sending out emails right away to see if we could make it happen.”

With help from officials at Curling Canada, MacKinnon met Canadian skip Pat Simmons, third John Morris, second Carter Rycroft and lead Nolan Thiessen. While she chatted with Thiessen, who’s a big, strapping lad, Norwegian skip Thomas Ulsrud happened by and told her she was talking with the second-best lead in the tournament.

“Very good luck to you in your curling. Except Sunday night,” she replied, referring to an anticipated Norway-Canada meeting in the gold-medal game.

Wilma McKinnon, middle, poses with Team Canada members Pat Simmons, left, and Nolan Thiessen after receiving a jersey signed by the team. (CHRISTIAN LAFORCE / Staff)

After Thiessen left to get ready for Italy, each of the Canadian players stopped by one by one, and MacKinnon knew them all by sight.

“None of you fellas has to introduce yourself to me,” she said to Rycroft, and “Good luck Sunday night. Bring home the gold,” to Simmons.

Morris said it was a bit out of the ordinary for the team to be brought to meet a fan during an event, but he didn’t mind.

“If it means the world to somebody to meet the members of our team, if it really lifts their spirits, then we’re all for it,” he said.

MacKinnon was presented with a Team Canada jersey with Rick Lang’s name on the back that had been autographed by the whole team. Lang, a coach with the national team who won two world championships playing out of Northern Ontario, told MacKinnon he wasn’t exactly clear where Aspy Bay is.

“I’m from northern Cape Breton, the very tip of Nova Scotia. My dad always loved to watch curling, so we’d sit with him and he got us into it.

“I have two other sisters that are very interested in curling, and they’re going to be very jealous of me, I’ll be sure of that,” said the mother of five, continuing to sing the praises of curlers.

“To me, it’s a more exacting sport than hockey. They’ve got this little puck and this great big net, but with the rock, you have to be so precise. Curlers should get paid as much as hockey players.”

That got her another hug from Lang.

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A man from Arkansas may have to undergo dialysis for the rest of his life after suffering from kidney failure. The reason? Drinking too much iced tea.

A recent entry in the New England Journal of Medicinehighlighted the case of a 56-year-old unnamed man who was brought to the hospital after he developed persistent body aches, malaise, and nausea. He underwent different types of exams, including a creatinine test that revealed his was 4.5 mg per deciliter, a far cry from the less than 3 mg during the previous two years. Although that pinpointed there's something wrong with his kidneys, his urine sample didn't contain any hematuria (blood presence) or proteinuria (protein leakage).

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He is suffering from a kidney failure due to the presence of excessive oxalate crystals.

Oxalate is a natural substance found in many various types of food such as chocolates, brans, and spinaches. However, the man wasn't eating too much of these. He has diabetes, which may lead to kidney nephropathy as blood pressure rises, but it wasn't the cause either. He didn't have any previous medical record or family history.

However, he was an excessive iced tea drinker--black tea, to be more specific. In fact, he consumed as many as 16 cups of it on a daily basis. An average person consumes around 11 glasses of liquids, which already include water, coffee, and sodas.

Doctors of University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences including Dr. Umbar Ghaffar therefore concluded that his condition was simply a consequence of overconsumption of iced tea, which also contains oxalate. He was actually taking more than 3 times the normal oxalate level.

While the man's case is scary--they have now called it iced tea nephropathy--that doesn't mean a person should stop drinking iced tea altogether. According to Dr. Randy Luciano of Yale School of Medicine, it was excessive consumption that led to the problem. 

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Inauguration of a dialysis unit at Government District Headquarters Hospital on Thursday has fulfilled the long-pending demand for such a facility at the public hospital in this region.

In the past, patients had to depend on private health sector hospitals for dialysis.

Now, with the installation of the unit that has reverse osmosis facility to generate pure water, hospital sources said four patients can avail of the treatment, every day, under the Chief Minister’s Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme.

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