Gardening saved my life, says kidney patient

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Gardening saved my life, says kidney patient

    * Health

7 Dec 10 @ 05:00pm by Rowan Cowley

GARDENING has always been a large part of Epping resident Domenico Agostino’s life but, since kidney disease has enslaved him to dialysis, his garden has become proof he is alive.

Mr Agostino, 79, has been on dialysis for five hours a day, three days a week for 4 1/2 years.

He feared his worsening illness would lead to a reciprocal decline in his beloved back and front gardens.

But a combination of passion for life and the support of loved ones has allowed him to keep his passion, and his fruit and vegies, alive.

“I get very tired and it’s a bit hard, but I don’t want to stop, I want to keep it going. I never feel good but I am all right.

“I will fight to the end.”

“Nineteen people that I have met while going through treatment have died in the 4 1/2 years I have been on dialysis,” he said.

The Agostinos moved to their Epping home 42 years ago and Mr Agostino, who previously co-owned a fruit shop with his wife Joanna, started planting seeds.

Mr Agostino’s seeds grew into a beautiful garden, with the front yard containing trimmed hedges and beautiful rose bushes, including red roses which won first prize at the Royal Easter Show 21 years ago.

The back garden boasts grapes, figs, plumbs, apricots, olives and Mr Agostino’s pride and joy - tomatoes grown from seeds he gathered 58 years ago in his homeland of Italy.

He said the tomatoes were the sweetest he had ever tasted.

Mr Agostino can no longer maintain the garden alone.

He is connected to devices designed to remove, clean and return his blood to his system, and finds it hard to bend for weeding or carry out heavier work such as mowing the lawns.

But he still regularly tends to his trees and gardens while son Mario helps with the lawn and his wife does some weeding.

“His biggest concern was that his garden would go to ruin. I’m not a great gardener but did not want to see that happen,” Mrs Agostino said.

Mrs Agostino, who has been his wife for 53 years, said she hoped the garden would help give him motivation to watch his grandchildren Nicholas, 13, and Benjamin, 11, grow up.

She said it was hard to watch someone you loved go through dialysis, but even harder for someone to go through the experience alone. “One lady we know swims and goes to the gym. Her family see her doing that and seem to assume she is ok,” she said. “It’s not that they don’t care, it’s just they don’t seem to understand what she is going through.”

The Agostinos said that many people they had met on dialysis were in their early 20s and they wanted to raise awareness of kidney disease.

http://northern-district-times.whereilive.com.au/news/story/gardening-saved-my-life-says-kidney-patient/