Thirty years of dialysis for 'miracle' woman
By Bethany Fuller | Statesville R&L
Theresa Spinner rested quietly on her hospital bed watching an early-morning talk show.
Her black hair was pulled off her face with a shiny pink shower cap and two red tubes were inserted into her right arm, which was extended toward the side of the bed with the palm side up.
It was just after 9:30 a.m. Friday, but Spinner had awakened around 6 a.m. for her treatment.
As her eyes roamed from the barely audible TV program to the nurses in the dialysis room at Iredell Memorial Hospital, her kind facial features were relaxed. The life-saving treatment she's undergone for the past 30 years looked routine, almost like the first cup of coffee of the morning.
"I feel God saved me for some reason," she told one of the nurses.
Her daughter, Carol Reid, believes her mother's success and longevity with the dialysis treatment is a miracle.
Slightly visible under the tubes is an older graft the nurses in Lynchburg, Va., once used to cleanse Spinner's blood.
Her arms have several raised scars where tubes once ran blood in and out of her body. The nurses did a good job placing the tubes in her arm that morning, she said.
Spinner, who will turn 80 next month, is cautious about who sticks her arm and how her blood pressure is taken. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, she will rub the spot on her upper bicep to make sure everything is OK.
The screen continues to count down the remaining time, but Spinner doesn't look back at it. After 30 years hooked up to similar machines, she knows what to expect and her limitations.
She was petrified the first time she walked into the Lynchburg Dialysis Center. Everyone was giving her encouraging news and saying she was going to be OK.
Then she met another patient named Clarence. He said she wouldn't last more than 10 years on dialysis.
Before she needed needles and tubes to flush the toxins out of her body, Spinner was frequently found sitting on the porch with her husband, Clyde.
"I used to sit on the porch and eat half a watermelon myself," Spinner said with a laugh.
A stay-at-home mother, she was an active member of Holcomb Rock Baptist Church, where she sang in the choir and taught Sunday school.
Reid remembers her mother canning vegetables and cooking biscuits and meats from scratch in their kitchen in the Boonesboro area of Lynchburg.
Clyde, a foreman at the Lynchburg Foundry, had a large garden where Spinner picked the produce for her recipes.
"She was just one of those old-fashioned housewives," Reid said.
Reid first noticed something was wrong when she came home for spring break from college.
"The day I came back, I knew death was in the house," she said. "She was delirious. She didn't know who her only child was."
When Reid tried to get her mom dressed for the day, she noticed some open sores. Reid tried to wash the wounds. The more she bathed, the worse her mother's skin got.
Spinner's doctor wanted Reid to bring her into his office. Reid decided to take her to Lynchburg General Hospital instead.
Shortly after being admitted, their family was given the life-altering news.
Spinner's physician had prescribed her medication to treat high blood pressure. The pills €"later deemed unneccesary because of a misdiagnosis"€” caused her kidneys to fail.
While some people have a knight in shining armor, the Spinner family had a nephrologist named Dr. Richard Giles.
"If Dr. Giles said, 'Theresa, you need to stand on your head for 15 minutes a day,' she would have done it," Reid said.
Spinner's condition quickly improved after Giles started treating her.
Clyde considered donating one of his own kidneys. He wanted to make sure the chances of his wife's body accepting the organ were in their favor.
Giles couldn't promise the Spinners a 50-50 chance, so Clyde decided against the surgery.
Spinner stands by her husband's decision not to receive a transplant.
Dialysis worked, she said. Even today, there are no guarantees a kidney transplant would be successful, she said. She knows people who have undergone multiple procedures without success.
After Giles discharged her from the hospital in 1979, she started receiving treatments at Lynchburg Dialysis Center.
Spinner's entire world changed instantly.
Every week, she underwent several six-hour treatments at the center. She had to lose weight and learn how to cook all over again, Reid said.
In order to make all the hours she has spent in a bed or in a chair at the center worthwhile, she had watch every ounce of water that goes into her body, including pork chops.
"She has to be careful," Reid said. "It takes a little while to learn what you can and cannot have."
Clyde was by her side until his death in 2005.
It took a few years, but gradually Spinner gained control of her life.
Reid recalled her mother's 10th anniversary on dialysis when Clarence's death sentence was still floating through her mind. For a while, she was depressed and finally acknowledged why to her daughter.
"She realized, 'Oh wait a minute, I can do this,' " Reid said. "It wasn't the death sentence he gave her."
Her dialysis treatments were gradually reduced from six hours to three, and then to 15 minutes.
Spinner said she doesn't sleep like some patients do. She watches her machine, and sometimes others' as well. She is quick to point out if someone's machine isn't working just right.
Spinner said she has grown to love Statesville.
On Oct. 19, the Reids called Spinner, who was still living in Lynchburg at the time, to tell her they had arrived home safely after a visit.
Hours later, they received another phone call from a family member who said Spinner had fallen and was in Lynchburg General.
Her bones had started to deteriorate, Reid said. The bone loss, coupled with a few other problems, convinced the Reids it was time for the independent Spinner to move to Statesville.
A few months ago, Reid noticed she had become less mobile and needed a lot more assistance.
She took Spinner to see Dr. Willie Whitaker, who admitted her to Iredell Memorial in April.
"He had to build her strength back up," Reid said. "She is so disciplined that she didn't take in the nutrients that she should be."
On Thursday, Reid and her husband, Ernest, stopped in around lunchtime. Spinner let him eat her pie while she ate her own chicken fingers and french fries.
"Most of us don't adhere to the rules and she's a stickler for the rules," Ernest said.
She smiled and said she knew she would be better once she got out of the hospital on Friday.
However, Friday's blood work revealed she had too much carbon dioxide.
"She is very disappointed," Reid said Saturday. "They don't what to expect because she's been on dialysis for so long. The doctors say that she is a miracle."
http://www2.mooresvilletribune.com/content/2009/may/17/thirty-years-dialysis-miracle-woman/news/
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