I had HD. I was in Stage 3 until a round of shingles dropped me to low 4. Prior to that my neph had asked me to consider a vegetarian diet but since there wasn't a good renal diet knowledge base in my area I designed my own. That, along with good medical management and less than 6 months on dialysis my docs said gave my only remaining damaged kidney enough time to recover from the "shock" of a bad case of shingles. My kidney began to function better a little at a time until I no longer needed dialysis.