Agnes Rusan of St. Louis is working, going to the grocery and handling everyday chores that most people take for granted. Kidney dialysis three times a week at a local facility used to take up the bulk of her day and her energy, which made those simple tasks more difficult.
Rusan has been on dialysis since 2005 due to kidney failure after being treated for high blood pressure since she was 16 years old. That was in the mid-1970s, at the height of afro hairdos, bell-bottomed pants and "doing your own thing." Looking back, Rusan admits that things could have turned out better.
"Had I been doing the right things, like eating right and controlling my weight, I could have prevented it," she said.
Dialysis is her life-saving treatment for end-stage renal disease, but she always felt tired.
"When I went to the grocery store, I had to ride in one of those buggies," she said. "I was just drained, emotionally and physically."
She received her treatments at Affiliated Hospitals Dialysis Center, where the healthcare team decided to train Rusan to do her own dialysis in her home, using a portable hemodialysis device, called an NxStage System.
"I do everything that you would do at the center. I am actually doing hemodialysis," Rusan said. "You have to get trained to put your needles in. And once you are trained at doing it, it actually forms a buttonhole – so you are using blunt needles. They don’t hurt at all."
Within two weeks of beginning her hemodialysis at home, Rusan said, she felt better, which allowed her to leave the buggy parked at the grocery for someone else.
"The first thing, I saw that I could walk longer," she said.
"I used to could walk just down the hallway, and I would get tired from my bedroom to my front door. And then I just started walking longer, and I was, ‘Hmmm, I am not getting tired!’"
Now Rusan said she walks around in the shopping malls and feels fine. She also enjoys bowling.
Home dialysis may not be for everyone with permanent kidney failure.
Susan Ronning, RN, BSN, is the home hemodialysis coordinator at the center who trained Rusan. People who are motivated to participate in their own health care with a strong desire to maintain their independence make good candidates for home dialysis, but each physician and clinic makes those determinations.
For Rusan, home dialysis gives her the energy, freedom and mobility to normalize her daily life. She administers dialysis at home more often than she would receive treatment at a health center, but it also takes less time.
"I do my dialysis in the evening when I get home from work, so I’m usually on the machine by 6 p.m. and I’m off by 8:30 – 8:45 p.m.," Rusan said.
"At home, I’m only on for two-and-a-half hours. It takes about a half-hour to prep the machine though. At home is a lot shorter time and it doesn’t wear your body down as much, I guess, but you do it more, because I do it five days a week versus three days per week."
Rusan said her doctor was able to reduce her days of home dialysis from six to five days a week, because it is working out so well for her.
"I would tell anybody who is capable of doing it at home that they really, really should do it," Rusan said. "Give it a try."
Written by Sandra Jordan and reprinted with permission from the St. Louis American
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