Dialysis is not a death sentence, nor is it just for grandparents
I spent a bit of time today watching some videos that were aimed at possble future dialysis patients. Some of what I watched were patient success stories. While that is great, and there is a greater need for patient to patient support, I noticed a few things.
One, so many say that your life doesn’t have to stop when dialysis starts. While I don’t have any issue with that in itself, as it’s very true, life doesn’t stop when you begin dialysis, but I don’t really undestand why anyone would think it would. If they were properly educated, they would know that dialysis is a treatment meant to prolong life, not end it.
As anyone who’d been following me for a while knows, I’ve been on dialysis for a little more than six years, and have had kidney disease for nearly 20 years. When I was on dialysis as a child, I was also in junior high school. I didn’t see myself any different than my friends, except that I was hooked up to a machine at night to clean my blood. As an adult, I don’t see myself any different than I did then, I still have to be hooked to a machine to clean my blood, and I don’t look any different than anyone else.
When it comes to living life, I don’t think I’ve missed out on anything because of dialysis. I have routinely travelled to New York since 2007 to visit my best friend, and I’m going to Ottawa next month for a concert.
Something else I noticed, all of the people in these videos were older, over the age of 50. It makes it seem that kidney disease is something that only older people get, which isn’t true. I was on dialysis at the age of 12, and there were many who were younger than me, both on peritoneal and hemodialysis. If these videos were meant to be instructional, there should be some there for parents, how to cope with their child’s illness, and how to explain the illness to their children, and not just the ill child, but their siblings as well. My little brother was 6 when I got sick, and he didn’t understand any of it, even today, 20 years later, he still doesn’t understand all of it.
Dialysis is not the death sentence that television makes it out to be. It’s just one of the treatments that are available to kidney patients. Another tv myth is that a transplant is the be all end all cure, however, it also is just one of the treatments available. A transplant is not forever. I know this, as I’ve had two of them
