Dialysis and kidney failure

I've just finished my four month stint working on a dialysis unit. It has been a good experience in many ways, I've learned a lot but I could not do it for the rest of my life. People on dialysis are very sick.

You need dialysis if your kidneys stop working. You have two kidneys that clean the blood, removing toxic waste from the body and producing urine. If your kidneys stop working poisons build up in your blood, you cannot get rid of excess fluid and you will die. Dialysis replaces the function of the kidneys.

The whole thing is more complicated than that but that is the basic story. If your kidneys don't work you need dialysis. You are either attached to a machine for several hours on a few days a week or you have a surgical procedure which turns your abdominal cavity into a mini dialysis machine (which is also not ideal as you have to have several hours of dialysis every day although you can walk about while you have it). If you are lucky you might get a transplant but a transplant will at best last for around 15 years and complications can occur.

Many of these patients do not suffer from kidney failure alone. They often have diabetes, auto-immune problems or heart disease. Some of them are very young (19, 20, 21) and some (a few) are well over 80. Many have had strokes or amputations. All of them are dependant on technical advances that have been made over the past 60 years. All of them would have been dead if the year was 1906. Most of them would die if there was a total powercut lasting for three weeks or more in this country. That's a pretty grim thought. I wonder what has happened to people who need dialysis in Iraq.....

I have a lot of respect for these people. For the most part they cope well with having had their lives taken over by disease. We are lucky that in Britain most people who need dialysis get it. It is not the same everywhere. I hope I never need dialyisis.

For more info go to http://www.kidney.org.uk/

A good book is Kidney failure explained by Andy Stein and Janet Wild. You can get it on www.amazon.co.uk

phunky