The hate/love relationship with a machine
I sit here in a Lazy Boy type of chair as my blood circulates through tubes that carry it to a machine to cleanse it through dialysis so I can live with failed kidneys.
Every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I report to the dialysis clinic, where I am hooked up to a machine by large needles stuck in an arm. Not too pleasant but it keeps me alive.
As I sit here, I can't help but think of my mortality and the people who die every day while waiting for a hoped-for kidney transplant. More people die of kidney disease than do of breast or prostate cancer each year, according to the National Kidney Foundation.
More than 661,000 Americans have kidney failure. Of these, 468,000 individuals are on dialysis until they either get a kidney transplant or die.
I can't help but focus on this dialysis machine I am hooked up to that I and hundreds of thousands have a hate/love relationship with. Hate because it is a painful, long, every-other-day process of cleansing the blood to keep me alive. Hate because though the machine keeps me alive, the three days each week I am hooked up to it starting at 6:30 a.m. are shot from the process.
Love because it does keep me alive as my blood is taken from my body and cleansed in a four-hour ritual that leaves me wiped out.
But I can't help but wonder why we need to depend on these machines when kidney transplantation is available, convenient and safe.
Then I recall that it takes not just a recipient but a donor to make for a successful organ transplant. And there are more than 101,000 people who need a kidney through transplant, but only 17,000 people receive one each year.
Less than 20%, leaving 80% at risk of dying.
Why? Because too few people are willing to step forward and be a kidney donor for a slowly dying person. Because too few people want to be “inconvenienced” by a simple surgery procedure and a couple days of recuperation to donate a kidney for a person who will die without one.
But is it their fault?
Are they being selfish?
Maybe some, but most just do not know enough about the simple procedure to donate a kidney and save a life. It calls for showing up in the morning for a simple procedure to remove on of the two kidneys most people have. Recovery is an overnight process and the donor can go home the next day. It is simple and pain-free and one can save a life.
As I sit here and watch my blood circulate into and out of a machine, a person dies of kidney failure.
Neal Raisman is a Bexley resident and a past college president. He has kidney failure and is in need of a donor.