Patients also spend Christmas and New Years in the dialysis centre
Kassel – Being treated medically at Christmas, lying in bed connected to very complicated life-saving machines while others sit under the Christmas tree with their families and eat cookies: what is a bad idea for many is educational for two dozen patients died on Christmas Eve December 26. Spending hours on dialysis at PHV medical center, normalcy declined.
You have to go to the MVZ of nephrologists Dr. Markus Schwickardi and dr. Sebastian Howest has his blood cleaned three times a week due to conditions that make his kidneys inoperable. This is a procedure that takes three to five hours. This is the only way they can survive.
Easter, Christmas or New Years – dialysis has top priority, says the 62-year-old woman with short blonde hair, who doesn’t want to be named. “The treatment is a curse and a blessing at the same time.” As a result, she comes in with mixed feelings. On the one hand, she is not free, she can never go anywhere of her own accord. But her body is crying out for it and in the end she would have just died without the dialysis cleaning up her blood.
The woman, who has been coming to the dialysis center on Herkulessstraße on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for three years, tells the story of her suffering: At the age of 32, she was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. To spare her the ordeal of dialysis, her husband donated a kidney. She was implanted. But after some time, the patient developed skin cancer, helped by drugs that prevent organ rejection. The oncological treatment damaged the implant so much that it had to be removed. Since then, the patient has been addicted to dialysis.
She feels she is in good hands and well cared for, says the woman from Kassel, who herself has worked in a medical and nursing profession. She has even won a friend to the center. The older woman lying in her bed next to her, connected to the dialysis machine, has grown with her over the years, they laugh and are silent together. Sometimes we are sad together. It is important to accept that you are a dialysis patient. The disease has sharpened her awareness to appreciate the finer things in life, she says. Live more intensely.
As he passes the time reading the tablet or watching television in the large room with six beds in all, his blood flows from his left arm through the cannulas into the dialysis machine. Nicole Vöcking, assistant physician for nephrology, monitors the information on the screen. All relevant values, such as blood temperature, are listed here.
The dialysis machine pumps about five liters of blood from each patient through the filter, the dialyzer, 13 times at a rate of 280 milliliters per minute. The dialyzer, explains Sebastian Howest, is the heart of the system. Among other things, it consists of tiny capillaries through which the blood flows and is purged, for example of potassium, until it can function again. Howest: “A very complex process.” The MVZ has 22 places available for a total of 65 patients. Another dialysis center is located at the clinic and one in Baunatal.
“Merry rest of Christmas”, someone says goodbye. The taxi is already waiting. “My husband cooked,” says the 62-year-old. Now I can’t wait.”
“I admire our patients,” says Dr. Quanto. They are people from whom I learn a lot”.
background
In Germany, the number of dialysis patients is estimated at 80,000. In northern Hesse there are between 300 and 400 of them. These are people with kidney disease who depend on their blood being rid of excess water and waste and excretion products which would lead to life-threatening poisonings. Dialysis is usually understood as washing the blood, although other procedures are also performed.
