Kidney Dialysis: “It’s Kept Me Alive”, Says One Hoosier

The WIBC News Special “Beating Diabetes: Sweet Stories From Indiana” airs tonight on 93 WIBC.

RICHMOND, Ind.–People who have lost the function of their kidneys need a life-saving process called kidney dialysis. If you are one of the one in ten Hoosiers who have diabetes, you may want to learn more about it. About four in ten people with diabetes ends up with kidney disease.

While it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll end up losing your kidney function, it could happen. Dialysis essentially does what urination does and filters out the waste from your system.

“The process itself takes nine hours, give or take. Maybe a little bot more than that with the prep. So, it does kind of hinder the evenings,” said Father Kevin Morris. He’s a patient a Fresenius Kidney Care in Richmond.

“It’s kept me being able to go to work every day. It’s kept me being able to continue the ministry every day. That’s just the work side. It’s kept me alive.”

Morris is on paritoneal dialysis, which is home dialysis. He’s connected to a machine every night for nine hours in his bedroom, via a 30 ft. hose. That machine pumps a solution of sugar-dextrose solution into a port in his belly. The solution filters out the waste, which is then pumped back out.

The other type of dialysis in hemodialysis, which is done in the clinic, three times per week.

“When you come for a regular hemodialysis three times a week, you have an assigned chair time…and that’s your time you need to be here because we have a limited number of chairs, limited number of people we can put in that chair at that time,” said Angie Thumb, dietician at Fresenius.

She said that’s one reason many people choose home dialysis.

“Almost everyone could do home dialysis. On national average only about ten percent of patients choose to do that. The more information they have the more people  tend to choose home dialysis if they’re more aware of it,” said Thumb.

Another advantage of home dialysis is that the diet is a little more liberal because your system is cleaned out every day, rather than just three times per week.

People on dialysis have a sodium restriction and also can’t have a lot of fluids because they are not urinating or not urinating as much because of the kidney disease.

PHOTOS: Chris Davis/Emmis