End-Stage-Renal-Disease-from-a-Patients-Perspective

End Stage Renal Disease from a Patient’s Perspective

End stage renal disease occurs when you kidney function decreases to the point that your kidneys no longer remove wastes, concentrate urine, and regulate electrolytes. Symptoms will include decreased alertness, drowsiness, confusion, decreased sensation in the hands, feet, or other areas, decreased urine output, bruising or bleeding, fatigue, nausea and vomiting or even coma. Symptoms usually appear when your kidney function nears 10% or less. This is a life threatening condition. Without treatment you will die.

Kidney failure can be the cause of several other severe medical conditions. Included are urinary tract blockages and infections, congestive heart failure, Glomerulonephritis, which is a type of kidney disease caused by inflammation of the internal kidney structures (glomeruli), which help filter waste and fluids from the blood, hypertension, and kidney stones.

Dialysis or kidney transplantation are the only treatments for ESRD. Your physical condition and other factors determine which treatment is used.

Causes of ESRD

End stage renal disease’s most common cause is diabetes. A person may have chronic renal failure for years before developing end stage renal disease. The tests your nephrologists may perform include creatinine and BUN (blood, urea, nitrogen) levels and creatinine clearance. These tests and others are often results of a 24 hour urine collection given to your doctor.

Prognosis

Without dialysis or a kidney transplant, death will occur from the buildup of fluids and waste products in the body. Both of these treatments can have serious risks and consequences.

Dialysis

I have been a dialysis patient for more than 5 years. Dialysis is terrible. Three times a week I have two 15 gauge needles stuck in my arm (yes, it hurts) to receive a hemodialysis treatment. I have had eleven surgeries to either install or repair dialysis access sites in my arm, neck, chest, and stomach.

The treatments drain my energy and sometimes make me sick to my stomach.

Those are some bad things about dialysis. Now here is the good. It keeps me alive! Without regular dialysis I would die.

Kidney Transplant

If you are otherwise fairly healthy you may qualify for a kidney transplant. Please visit http://www.medicare.gov/Publications/Pubs/pdf/esrdcoverage.pdf for more information.

You can receive a kidney transplant from a living donor or a cadaver. A living donor can be anyone willing and healthy enough to donate a kidney that is a match that your body will not reject. A blood relative has best chance of matching but someone unrelated by blood can also test to donate.

A cadaver donation is from someone who has agreed to be an organ donor and has died. Often the cadaver donor has died unexpectedly from an accident.

When placed on the National Donor List; http://www.kidney.org; you will probably wait 5 to 7 years for a transplant depending on your blood type.

Social Security Disability and Medicare

Here is a potential bright spot. If you have ESRD and are on dialysis, you qualify for Medicare (no matter what your age is) and you will qualify for Social Security Disability payments because end stage renal disease/dialysis is listed on Social Security Disability List of Impairments. This qualifies you for Social Security Disability Income (SSDI). Please go to Social Security website for more info: http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10029.html

If you read this probably yourself or a loved one are having kidney related health issues. Please take it seriously. I fought with my Doctors about going on dialysis for months. After several stays in the hospital I felt so bad that I finally relented. After my first dialysis treatment I felt better.

I wish you well.