Thirty years on home dialysis

Thirty years on home dialysis

Oct 10, 2006

Most patients with kidney failure face an uncertain future on dialysis, waiting and hoping for a successful kidney transplant.

A Christchurch man is still waiting, after nearly 30 years on home dialysis. But he is still smiling, despite some severe setbacks.

In 1976, at 19 years of age, newlywed Robert Bryden, suffered unexpected kidney failure, and was hooked up for his first home dialysis treatment.

Thirty years later, the machine still keeps him alive.

"You just play the hand you're dealt with, Bryden says. "It can be rough but I wouldn't want to be blind, I wouldn't want to be in a lot of situations people are in. I can cope with this, I can deal with this."

Bryden is a fighter. He is recovering from having his second leg removed due to a side effect from long-term dialysis.

"In a month's time I'm going to be walking, that's the goal, to be walking before Christmas."

Nor does the fact he has suffered the disappointment of two failed kidney transplants get him down.

"It's highly unlikely I'll have a successful one ever so this is it, get used to it, and I have really," he says.

Bryden has spent nearly 40,000 hours on home dialysis. That is over four years of his life in total hooked up to a machine three nights a week for eight hour stretches.

Top kidney specialist Kelvin Lynn was a trainee doctor when he first treated Bryden.

He says Bryden has been remarkable during his illness, raising a family, helping build his own house, and until recently, holding down full-time work.

"I've never heard him say 'why have I got this'. You know, he's focussing on what he can do rather than what he's lost."

But Bryden admits the relentlessness of life on a machine has been a strain on his ex-wife and two boys.

"There's no escape from it and that's the most difficult thing. And it's hard on the family too. It's just they might as well be on dialysis too because they're trapped in the same little bubble."

Lynn says patients like Bryden save the health system millions.

"Over a thousand patients are on it, the two forms of home dialysis at the moment in New Zealand. And they're saving the health service around thirty million dollars a year."

Bryden says he doesn't dwell on the long-term future.

"I don't know how much longer I can hold out, how many more springs I can see. But I don't really don't think about that too much. I've got two boys going through life and maybe I can hang on and become a grandparent."

In four more years he will set a record for the longest New Zealander ever on home dialysis.

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URL: http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411749/848447
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