At Home Dialysis is as good as a deceased donor kidney transplant!

One of my doctors, Dr. Chan. did a study to show that doing nocturnal (the prescribed amount) dialysis is as good as receiving a kidney transplant from a deceased donor.

Studies still in fact show that receiving a kidney from a living donor will ultimately give the best result, but the fact that home hemo and deceased donor transplants are on par is amazing news!

For all of us home dialyzers out there, I’m sure this is great news, but it just reconfirms how we’ve already felt in terms 0f being on conventional in centre dialysis vs. home hemo.

On Tuesday evening and for the better part of Wednesday, I talked to different newspaper media outlets about this news. I also discussed my experiences in terms of how I ended up on dialysis, how I decided to try home dialysis, etc. I spoke to about 4 different news papers, but only 1 had a spiffy picture of me that was taken yesterday (I am yet to check actual newspapers…I’ll go pick them up a little bit later).

Here is the article from the globe and mail, complete with spiffy dialysis picture. Tell me what you think of the article and its findings:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/at-home-dialysis-touted-as-the-next-best-thing/article1259490/

On Wednesday, while my doctor spoke to the different media outlets, I was just amazed. I mean, obviously he’s a smart guy, but listening to how he answered their questions with such finesse was so cool. Based on the one sided conversation that I heard, I knew that they were asking him a lot of questions concerning transplants. I think they were making reference to whether people get “priority” over a deceased donor kidney; perhaps the sickest person gets the organ first. Dr. Chan explained that there is a transplant list which in some cases (like mine) can cause me to be on the list for upwards of 10 years. In other situations, for example, liver transplants, lungs, heart, etc., those people are often given such organs based on need/priority rather than how long they’ve been on a “list”. He also explained that there is not any sort of long term therapy to sustain life for those other organs as there is for kidneys.

He was also throwing out statistics like crazy! Soo amazing to listen to him speak. But when he speaks to you directly, he doesn’t dumb things down at all, but he speaks to you in a way that is easily understood. Just sitting there and listening to him speak to the reporters taught me a lot. He spoke about how much kidney function (10-15%) is considered too little, therefore needing intervention (dialysis). He spoke about tons of things. There were some pictures of myself and Dr. Chan, but I didn’t see any online. I hope I can find some when I go and pick up the newspapers from the local 7-eleven.

Anyhow, I’ll be needing to head off to the local shoppers drugmart to pick up some prescriptions so I might as well pick up the newspapers that I need at the same time!