Dialysis dictates my daily routine
There is no cure for kidney disease, and treatments greatly impact quality of life. Dialysis patients require many hours of treatment, several times per week, making it more difficult to engage in life and work. It is often physically and mentally exhausting.
As Pat’s kidney function dropped to 10%, he opted for a form of treatment called peritoneal dialysis, which enables patients to dialyse at home. This removed the need to visit a medical centre multiple times per week for haemodialysis. However, it also increased the frequency of dialysis required to four 30-minute sessions per day.
Pat says: “Dialysis is inconvenient. I have to dialyse when I wake up, then again at lunchtime, teatime and before I go to bed. It has affected my ability to travel. We manage to visit Portugal by car because we can transport enough dialysis bags, but air travel is pretty much out of the question. It’s a pity as my wife and I had hoped to see more of the world after retiring.”
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- Source: https://www.kidneyresearchuk.org/2024/03/19/i-didnt-know-my-blood-pressure-would-cause-kidney-failure-until-it-was-too-late/