41134478•03/26/13
Rick Padfield has hemodialysis three times a week for six hours each time. The nursing staff such as Victoria Krizsan, registered nurse
clinician, become almost like family.
transplant start at about $6,000 a year but Krizsan says it can be much higher depending on the drugs.
For the recipient the gift of a transplant is priceless.
“A transplant is life changing but it’s still just another form of therapy,” said Krizan.
Haffie says she knows she’d run the risk of rejection and she’d probably be advised to wear a mask in public to avoid the risk of infection. It does not matter; she’d just like to wake up in the morning and not have to face dialysis again.
Rick Padfield, 57, sits in the hemodialysis unit at MHRH hooked up to a machine for the next six hours. It’s what he does three times a week and has been doing for nine years already.
“
It takes about 8.1 years for a kidney transplant for someone with O type blood, the most common type. In Medicine Hat, we only see one or two transplants a year.
important people have regular blood tests to determine the level their kidneys are functioning at.
— Victoria Krizsan ” OFFICE FURNITURE WAREHOUSE 522D Maple Avenue S.E., Medicine Hat 403-526-6475
www.desknfile.net 82 | 2013 REPORT ON SOUTHEAST ALBERTA
Medicine Hat’s nephrologist is Dr. Aijaz Ahmad, who runs a renal clinic and refers patients to the pre-transplant clinic in Calgary. Krizsan says there are numerous tests a patient goes through before going on to the transplant list.
“It takes about 8.1 years for a kidney transplant for someone with O type blood, the most common type,” said Krizsan. “In Medicine Hat we only see one or two transplants a year."
A focus group, headed by nursing students at Medicine Hat College, would like to see that change and they’re lobbying for a provincial online organ- donor registry.
More than 4,300 Canadians are waiting for an organ transplant and 80 per cent of them require a kidney. In 2011, 285 Alberta patients died while on a waiting list for a transplant.
An online donor registry helps families express their wishes about organ donation, making it more likely next- of-kin will comply with their wishes, the group argues. It also increases community awareness about the need and could be accessed by health-care workers in the event of an emergency or death.
They say one of the reasons a registry doesn’t already exist in Alberta is the potential cost.
Anti-rejection medications after a
“There’s nothing I’d like better than a transplant and an opportunity to go back to work,” said Padfield.
He’d like to see changes in how society views organ donation. The more the subject is talked about the better the chance of people openly discussing it and making their wishes known. He’d even like to see it discussed in schools so that we grow up talking about it.
Padfield had to give up his job last November due to an overactive thyroid and too much calcium in his system, permanently causing numbness in his lower legs. He says it's related to the dialysis.
“There are ongoing issues with dialysis and it affects people in different ways,” said Padfield.
He’s emotional as he talks about the young people in their 20s and 30s he meets in the dialysis unit and the effect this all has on them.
“Being mentally tough is part of the process,” he says.
Dialysis is hard enough when you’re at home or can reach your local hospital, but it gets complicated when you want to go on vacation. As long as you stay in Canada arrangements are made with other hospitals and the cost is covered. If you go to the U.S. you will pay $780 for every four hours and Alberta Health refunds $200 of it, says Padfield.
For Padfield and Haffie the bright spot is the nursing staff who are so kind, friendly and helpful. ■
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