Inspiration can come from painful situations. For one Tulsan that meant turning a diagnosis into music.
Webster Wortham knew something was wrong when he started shedding weight about a decade ago.
“It may have been like 40 to 50 pounds within two or three months,” Wortham said. “I wasn’t doing any extra exercise or anything different.”
His significantly smaller waistline came from diabetic rapid weight loss. The pounds drop when blood sugar levels are so high that the body removes extra sugars through urine.
Nephrologist Sunil Agrawal said two things lead to abnormal kidneys.
“Really, diabetes and hypertension are the two largest drivers for why people have abnormal kidney function,” Agrawal said.
According to the American Kidney Fund more than 35 million people are currently living with kidney disease.
Agrawal describes kidney disease as “silent,” meaning there aren’t any obvious symptoms, but he said that urine checks can lead to a diagnosis.
“Overall, it’s more of a diagnosis that’s made based on just annual labs and assessment of urine,” Agrawal said. “Those (labs and urine assessments) tend to be the real tools that we have to screen people to see if they have chronic kidney disease.”
Wortham was not really a doctor person, though. He grew up in a Christian household that would “pray their way through it” when it came to illness. Eventually, his wife convinced him to see a doctor. His prescribed diabetes medication made his already damaged kidneys worse.
“So basically, it was attacking my kidneys,” Wortham said. “It was making it harder for them to function.”
Wortham learned he had kidney disease. Doctors put him on dialysis.
After months of eating better and tests to make sure he was a viable candidate, Wortham was added to the transplant waiting list. It was a long road from first being diagnosed to receiving a kidney.
The process took seven years.
Despite the long wait, Wortham did not have a woe-is-me attitude.
“This is just the next thing that I have to get through. It’s been a lot of different things going on in life, period,” Wortham said. “This was just kind of one that I felt was like another challenge. I never felt like it would defeat me.”
Wortham had already been through a lot. His mother Patricia died in surgery during finals week when he was a freshman at Northeastern State University.
“My pops called me and told me she didn’t make it,” Wortham said. “She was going in for surgery on her heart. She didn’t get through the surgery.”
Despite the pain of losing his mother, Wortham powered through that life challenge by completing his bachelor’s degree in psychology. While in school, he learned about music therapy. It would come in handy later in life.
During his seven-year journey to the kidney transplant, Wortham’s friend, DJ No Name, gave him some beats he could rap over. This led to his stage name, Mr. Wortham, and the album “Views from the 11th” inspired by his illness.
Wortham started working on the album before receiving his new kidney. Listening to the record is now a contemplative experience.
“It’s a good type of memory or a good type of emotion that I get from it now. Like, going through it was crazy. Wortham said. “I get the hopeful, more of a hopeful type of emotion.”
That emotion will be on display during Wortham’s April 13 concert performance of “Views from the 11th” at Wompa, an event space in Tulsa.
