By Elaine Porterfield
Special to The Medium
Most Saturday mornings you’ll find Carolyn Harper-Brown of Beacon Hill at church making hundreds of sack lunches for the homeless, part of a feeding program she founded. Other days, you can find her supervising a community clothing bank at her church, Maranatha Adventist in South Seattle.
In addition, Harper-Brown and her husband, Louis Brown, are finishing the last steps to adopt the 2-year-old granddaughter they’ve raised since birth. On top of all this activity, Harper-Brown constantly monitors her health. She is especially careful of what she eats because she’s been diagnosed with congestive heart failure and accompanying kidney failure.
She’s done such a great job improving her lifestyle that she has reversed her kidney problems. She no longer needs dialysis to flush her body of waste because her kidneys are back on the job.
“I’m doing really rather good now, I think,” Harper-Brown said. “It has helped my health a lot to eat better and to generally have a healthier lifestyle. I eat low-sodium food and cut back on meat. I eat salmon, baked chicken and veggies. My husband is also a very healthy eater.”
When Harper-Brown’s health problems arose, she didn’t hesitate to make the necessary changes. “I knew that I had to do something a little more extreme,” she said. “I’ve had two open heart operations. I wanted to save my heart and my kidneys. Honestly, my heart is even better now that I’ve changed my diet.”
March is National Kidney Month, and Harper-Brown hopes to educate others about the growing health problem of kidney disease and persuade them to talk to their doctors about it. She has helped sponsor cooking lessons and a community exercise program. And on most Saturday evenings, up to 20 people come to her house to eat some of her tasty, healthy home cooking.
“In the African American community, our diet is not always the best,” Harper-Brown said. “This year, I started cooking with less salt, and I’ve learned how to put veggies in food. I’ve learned how to have chicken without having to fry it. Because of my own medical condition, I know other people need to do it too.”
She is also careful about eating fewer processed and packaged foods, which contain hidden salt that is tough on kidneys.
Harper-Brown is among the 1 in 7 American adults who have chronic kidney disease. In the African American community, the number increases four-fold because African Americans are also more likely to have diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, which are common causes of kidney disease.
Although African Americans make up 12 percent of the U.S. population, 35 percent of individuals with kidney failure on dialysis are African American.
Chronic kidney disease often worsens over time. If it progresses to irreversible kidney failure, the person will die unless they receive regular dialysis treatments or a kidney transplant. However, kidney damage can be slowed down or stopped if people get diagnosed early and, like Harper-Brown, change their lifestyles to include healthier habits.
Besides a new diet and more activity, Harper-Brown credits her faith for her improved health. “I am a Christian, and you have to keep the faith. It’s all about keeping the faith,” she said.
Her faith also inspires her commitment to helping the homeless. The Seattle native estimates she’s made “a little over 48,000 lunches. We’ll take 800 to 900 lunches downtown a week. We also take boxes and boxes of socks to the homeless. When we get a lot of coats in winter months, we pass out coats as well, all over downtown.
“We’ve been doing the sack lunches seven or eight years. I love doing it. It’s very rewarding to me. It began after my battle with my heart and kidney problems. I didn’t want to sit here and do nothing. People are so thankful for this… When you see how grateful they are for a peanut butter sandwich and some trail mix, you’d think they were having steak and lobster.”
For more information about kidney disease, diagnosis, treatment, classes and recipes visit www.nwkidney.org.
