As close as blood brothers
Dialysis center offers a social network to those in treatmentBy MAURY THOMPSON
thompson@poststar.com
Updated: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 10:09 PM EDT
GLENS FALLS -- For Rick Rasponte, it’s more than just a medical facility.
It’s an informal social network, albeit one he does not belong to by choice.
"Even though I would hate not seeing these people three days a week, it would be great," he said.
Rasponte has polycystic kidney disease, a hereditary condition that causes cysts to grow and ultimately burst in the kidney.
Dialysis treatments Rasponte receives three times a week at the Glens Falls Hospital Renal Dialysis Center on Broad Street keep the 53-year-old Glens Falls resident alive.
Routine three-and-a-half-hour dialysis treatments he receives every Monday, Wednesday and Friday filter fluid and chemicals from his body, a function his kidneys can no longer handle.
The treatment itself is not all that traumatic, once you get used to seeing the needles, said Rasponte, who worked as a Roman Catholic youth and family lay minister before becoming disabled.
"They’re 15 gauge needles. I call them sewer pipes," he quipped.
"And they do give you a nice chair — I’ve got to tell you that," he said. "If you went in there and just saw the chair, you’d think you were in a fancy beauty parlor."
The hard part comes later in the day and into the next day, when fatigue between treatments sets in.
"The way they describe it, it’s like your body’s running a marathon," he said.
That’s where the social network comes in.
The encouragement from staff and interaction with other patients keeps patients grounded, said Floyd Ladd, another patient.
"It’s like family. ... You know their names, you know about their kids and their grand kids," said Ladd, of Hudson Falls.
"The joke is we know what our patients have in their coffee and tea. I don’t know what my husband has in his," said Kathleen Andersen, the center’s nurse manager.
Rasponte and Ladd told their stories on Tuesday to two state Department of Health officials.
Dr. John Morley, medical director for the department’s Office of Health Systems Management, and Lisa McMurdo, director of the Division of Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety, toured the center as part of national awareness week sponsored by the American Nephrology Nurses Association.
The center has 24 stations that are pretty much occupied six days a week, mornings, afternoons and evenings, said Pamela Casey, a staff nurse and transplant coordinator.
The center recently added staffing to be able to stay open additional evening hours, in part to be able to accommodate dialysis patients from outside the area who are vacationing locally.
A dialysis patient can’t simply take time off from treatment during vacation.
The next closest dialysis centers are in Saratoga Springs, Elizabethtown (Essex County) and Rutland, Vt.
Previously, the center was turning away tourists who called ahead seeking treatment, unless appointments could be arranged when a local patient was going out of town.
The center, which opened in 2001, provides more than 20,000 treatments annually to about 100 patients, up from seven patients when the hospital first began offering dialysis in 1980 at another facility.
The main reason for the steady growth over time is the general increase of kidney failure, said Phil Kahn, a hospital spokesman.
Hypertension and diabetes are the leading causes of kidney failure, said Morley, the state Department of Health official.
Placing more emphasis on diet, exercise and prevention, over time, can reduce the number of patients needing dialysis, he said.
The hospital, in cooperation with Hudson Headwaters Health Network and other hospitals in Essex, Clinton and Franklin counties, operates a regional hypertension and diabetes management program from Glens Falls north to the Canadian border, said David Kruczlnicki, the Glens Falls Hospital’s president and chief executive officer.
One of the reasons for the tour was to draw awareness to legislative issues, said Casey, who also is the health policy representative for the American Nephrology Nurses Association.
The group is advocating for legislation, co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., that would make kidney transplant recipients eligible under Medicare for permanent coverage for medications necessary after a transplant to prevent rejection.
Medicare currently pays for medication for only 36 months after transplant surgery.
The medication costs, on average, about $30,000 per year, compared with the $68,000-per-cost of dialysis treatment, so Medicare would actually save money over the long run, Casey said.
Transplant surgery costs about $100,000, said Carol Lafleur, director of the northeastern New York chapter of the National Kidney Foundation.
The proposed legislation would extend Medicare coverage for prescription payments not covered by any other health insurance the patient might have, she said.
Rasponte said he has not placed his name on a waiting list for a transplant because of the follow-up medication cost that would be involved.
If the medication was covered, however, he would seek a transplant and, in time, be able to return to work instead of collecting Social Security disability benefits.
"It just makes fiscal sense to me," he said.
Renal Dialysis Center
* Opened in 2001 with 18 stations, costing $2.6 million to build. The facility now has 24 stations.
* Provides more than 20,000 treatments annually to about 100 patients from as far away as Albany, Schroon Lake and Vermont.
* Open six days a week providing morning, afternoon and evening treatments.
* Has a support group that raises money through bottle drives and an annual yard sale to assist patients with needs such as co-payments and transportation.
Source: Glens Falls Hospital Renal Dialysis Center staff and hospital spokesman
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