"He clearly doesn't know what he's talking about."
"He must not know English. Ask him again, in Japanese."
Well, yes, in theory. You're not supposed to be able to live without kidneys. But thanks to the miracle of modern medicine, dialysis three times a week, and a fanny pack full of drugs, I can "extend my survival." You see, I have an affliction called polycystic kidney disease (PKD), which made my kidneys swell up to the point that they were crushing my OTHER organs and I looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Junior. For reference, this image should give you a basic idea of the Hulkamaniacal monsters my kidneys became:
You think that's bad, just wait till those bumps hatch.
Unfortunately, when your kidneys mutate to that size, surgery isn't actually an option. The inside of your body is a pretty tightly packed place to begin with. Having kidneys several times larger than they are meant to be squished everything together like cheap luggage, and I was told that a normal nephrectomy would be too dangerous: Scraping two basketball-sized kidneys out of my torso carried a high risk of damaging one of my normal-sized, bullied organs, as well as a sky-high risk of infection.
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