Kikkert marks 30 years on dialysis

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Kikkert marks 30 years on dialysis

Posted 2 hours ago
   
By Nancy Boutin
Staff Writer

For Frank Kikkert of Aylmer, April 7 will be a bittersweet celebration.

That will mark his 30th anniversary on dialysis - a treatment that keeps him alive - and makes him something of legend at the Ed DeSutter Dialysis Unit in Tillsonburg

According to Jacquie Jansen, a registered nurse at the unit, while the life span of someone on dialysis ultimately depends on the age of the person, the frequency that they need to be dialyzed and their existing health conditions, five years is about the norm.

Kikkert, however, beat those odds long ago, and beat them exponentially.

Diagnosed at a young age with chronic renal failure, Kikkert first went on dialysis at age 23. By that time his older brother had already died of renal failure, and Kikkert recalls worrying that he might as well.

Because of his age, however, Kikkert was identified as a good candidate for a kidney transplant, and in fact, he went through three of the surgeries between 1979 and 1893 – two in BC and one in Ontario. Unfortunately, none of the surgeries proved a permanent solution for his damaged kidneys, and doctors eventually advised Kikkert that a fourth attempt could prove fatal.

So, for the majority of his adult life, Kikkert has relied on dialysis to keep him alive.

Three times a week he rises in the dark and takes a cab at 6 a.m. from his home in Aylmer to Tillsonburg, where he spends four-and-a-quarter hours allowing a machine to do the work his kidneys can’t. When his blood is cleaned of toxins, he gets back in a cab and heads home, where he said his life is basically a normal one.

“It’s a thing you have to get used to,” he said of dialysis, adding he credits a positive outlook with his survival thus far.

“I have to (have a positive outlook),” he said. “If you start feeling sorry for yourself that’s when you start to slide downhill.”

Watching Kikkert joke with and tease the team of nurses who run the unit, it becomes abundantly clear there’s a special camaraderie between staff and patients.

There has to be.

The late Ed Desutter, who led the charge to get a dialysis unit here in Tillsonburg, was often quoted as saying it took a special kind of person to be a dialysis unit nurse, and he was right.

Nurses at the local unit have taken the patients under their proverbial wings, and are even planning to host a special anniversary celebration for Kikkert next month.

Tillsonburg’s unit accommodates 30 patients who come three times a week for their life-saving dialysis. The youngest is 20, and the oldest is 90.

“Very few of them get transplants,” said Jansen.

While positive outlook may have been key in Kikkert’s survival, faith has been an equal player.

“I’d like to thank the Lord for so many years,” he said. “And I hope to keep going.”

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