DIALYSIS STORY
I still haven’t gotten used to the moment when the cannulas are inserted into my arm. I always look away and hold my breath, even after 25 years of dialysis!
I always sit in the same spot during treatment. Since 1986, it has always got to be the same place. I would never go to another clinic. I need to be able to trust the place and the people. Over the many years that I have been coming, I have sort of become a second mother to all the other patients and nurses.
When I was teaching at Harvard University back in the 1970s, there were only three large dialysis clinics in the U.S. In Harvard, we treated 50 patients and a dialysis session took six hours. The machines were very basic and I’m afraid I have to say that treatment entailed an almost unreasonable level of stress for the patients. However, back then, there was no alternative and at the end of the day, the quality of therapy could only be measured by whether a patient survived or not.
The clinic is also my second home. Monday, Wednesday and Friday are my dialysis days – at this stage, it’s almost as if things had always been this way.
I was 20 when my doctor told me I had kidney disease. I cried and didn’t speak to him for days. I was afraid of dialysis. Then I told myself: Okay, if you want to stay alive, then you’ll just have to do it.
Since then, I have experienced three generations of dialysis machines. The first models looked like washing machines. Nowadays, they remind me more of stereo systems.
Over the years, treatment has continually improved and doesn’t take as long anymore. For example, in the past, kidney patients with anemia were given blood transfusions – a very unpleasant experience. Today, luckily, anemia can be treated with medicine.
Dialysis has kept me alive. People on the street can’t even see that I am suffering from this illness. I can go shopping, get dressed up, visit friends – just like everyone else. I even run a mobile dog-grooming salon. I drive to my customers’ homes and, if I’m not feeling too well, then they come to me. A few years ago, I even groomed Dr. Lazarus’ poodles. They were really lovely animals.
Today in the U.S., more than 20 national quality standards apply. These parameters, various blood counts for example, allow clear statements to be made about the success of the treatment. They are the reason why patients like Linda Clark can still lead an active life after more than two decades of dialysis.
When Linda Clark received her first dialysis treatment in the mid-80s, the dialysis provider National Medical Care, which is now part of Fresenius Medical Care, and the U.S. Department of Health had just started to develop these quality standards. And we scientists established the first basic findings on medical correlations, for example, what potassium, magnesium, phosphate or urea concentrations in the blood correlate with a positive state of health in the patient.
The standards developed back then are continually being adapted to new findings. The government will now also use them as part of the new reimbursement system in the U.S. in order to calculate the level of reimbursement based on the quality of the treatment. We achieve these quality standards with 96% of our patients, that’s top ranking in our industry. According to the latest internal survey we conducted in October 2010, 93% of our patients described our treatment as “excellent” or “good”.