Michael’s Story
Dialysis is a scary word. When those words first left my doctor's mouth, I was left shaken. I knew that I had kidney disease, but dialysis just seemed far removed from my life. At the time, I was working for an attorney, helping disabled people apply for their Social Security disability benefits. I had clients that were on dialysis, and the horror stories that I heard cemented in my mind that I never wanted to go through that, until I heard about the different options available for dialysis. I was unaware at the time that there are two types of dialysis: hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis.
Hemodialysis is the kind of dialysis that most of us think about when we hear the word dialysis. They stab your arm with huge needles, drain your blood, run it through a machine that filters out the toxins and excess fluids, and then returns the blood to your body. What I did not realize is that there are options for home hemodialysis, often abbreviated HHD.
But I chose the alternate route, what I call "The Other Dialysis," peritoneal dialysis, often abbreviated PD. In PD, a catheter is implanted in your abdomen. This catheter is used to fill your belly with dialysate solution (basically sterile sugar water) which dwells in your abdomen for several hours. During the dwell period, toxins and excess fluids are transferred from your blood stream into the dialysate solution, passing through the peritoneal lining of the abdomen through osmosis. After several hours, the fluid is drained, and all of the excess fluid and toxins leave your body, similar to urinating. The dirty fluid even has a yellowish tint like urine.
I transitioned to continuous cycling peritoneal dialysis (CCPD). This is where I hooked myself up to a machine at night, called a cycler, and the cycler would fill my belly with dialysate, let it dwell, and then drain me. My prescription was for four cycles a night. I would go to sleep, and when I would wake up, I would simply unplug myself and go about my day. I did PD for almost 7 years before I received my kidney transplant in 2021, and besides some time off for the procedure and training, I never had to stop working.
PD was a blessing for me, but it is not for everyone. I had to go through several weeks of training to make sure I could perform the process safely. An infected peritoneal lining (peritonitis) is a real concern for PD patients and doctors, so aseptic techniques need to be followed when hooking up and unhooking from the PD connections. Thanks to the excellent training and support that I received from Fresenius, I was never contaminated, and I never had an infection.