New Book: Coping with dialysis treatments

Coping with dialysis treatments
Family uses personal experience to educate readers about dialysis treatments.

By Jamaal O'Neal
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Monday, July 16, 2007

When Daniel Offer's kidneys failed after triple heart bypass surgery in 1999, he was told he'd have to undergo dialysis, perhaps for the rest of his life.

But neither Offer nor his family had an idea of what that meant. They soon found out: Offer would have to visit a dialysis center three days a week to have his blood cleaned by a machine for three hours.

"The doctor never told me anything about the process or what to feel," Offer, a professor of Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences at Northwestern University, said from his suburban Chicago home Friday. "It was a big shock for me."

He and his family didn't find much information elsewhere, either.

"There was nothing out there," Offer said. "There was nothing that talked about the treatment or what the family may go through during the dialysis."

So Offer, 77, his wife, Marjorie Kaiz Offer, 65, and their daughter Susan Offer Szafir, a 35-year-old Austin freelance writer, decided to write a book to help other dialysis patients and their families try to maintain a normal life.

"Dialysis Without Fear" is scheduled for release July 23.

For two years, the trio collaborated over the phone and occasionally met in Austin to discuss the book. Offer said they interviewed more than 30 nephrologists — doctors specializing in kidney function — nurses, patients and technicians in the Austin and Chicago areas.

Szafir, who left her job as a marketer for Dell Inc. to pursue a career as a freelance writer in April 2004, said that when her parents approached her about writing the book, she was a bit hesitant.

"I was nervous about it because I had no medical background," she said. "But I offered a different voice to it, and that appealed to the publisher."

Chapters in the book highlight the family's personal accounts as they helped Offer cope with the life changes that came with dialysis. The book also addresses choosing the best dialysis method, whether to pursue a kidney transplant and the psychological impact of dialysis. Szafir said the main goal of the book was to reassure patients and their families that life goes on after dialysis.

"We all didn't know what hit us," Szafir said of her father's treatments. "We had to take it one step into another to help him recover."

Offer, who has undergone dialysis treatments for eight years, said he decided against registering for a kidney transplant because he doesn't want to have more surgeries. He said dialysis hasn't kept him from doing what he enjoys.

"I work half-time, I teach, and I can travel," Offer said. "When we went to visit Susan, we traveled to Fredericksburg, and they had a dialysis center there, and I loved it."

Though the work was tedious and time-consuming, Szafir said writing the book with her parents was worth it.

"They've told people that they got to work with their daughter on this project, and it makes them extremely proud," she said.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something like this with them."

joneal@statesman.com; 912-2547

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