No I didn’t get a dialysis treatment, but I got close!

Currently, as part of the last five weeks of my pharmacy education, I am spending some time at a dialysis center. Patients get brought in on three 4hr shifts during the day and are subsequently hooked up to friendly looking robot called the BBRAUN 566. While they sit there being amused by their personal TV and headphones, this machine sucks all the blood out of their body (not all at once of course) and removes waste and water before putting it all back in.

Isn’t it amazing that it takes a robot 5 feet tall and 3 feet wide to do the job of a kidney about the size of an adult fist? And not only that, but it’s not nearly as good at filtering waste as our actual kidneys. (Just as an aside, no one would argue that it took a very skilled designer to make the BBRAUN 566, but yet some claim that our kidney’s just happened by chance? Dum de dum dum…)

I spoke with one lady being dialyzed who told me how she ended up with in renal failure and received a kidney transplant in 1982. Since then she had lived a perfectly normal life with her new kidney until 1993 when she rejected the organ. She had such regret in her voice when she lamented the fact that she had not taken better care of herself after the surgery.

Another man was only 46 years old who had chronic high blood pressure that damaged his kidney’s so badly he ended up on dialysis three times a week. Were you thinking of not taking your blood pressure medicine this month? Pharmacists don’t recommend low blood pressure goals for our bottom line. High blood pressure is the second leading cause of renal failure behind diabetes.

I am only in my second week of the dialysis experience and I hope to add some more stories in a couple weeks.

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