Are you happy with your treatments?

[MooseMom]

To y'all in South Africa, it must be so incredibly frustrating to be forced onto the dialysis assembly line.  I really do hope that home hemo or other modalities will be available to you soon.  Would it be really stupid of me to ask you if there is anyone in your government/health department that you can talk to about possible future plans for more choices?

[MooseMom]

Isn't it odd to see the different approaches around the world? What struck me in one of the earlier posts was not being allowed to do your own iron infusion and, I assume, your own Epo or Aranesp. It is indeed strange how the medical staff in one country say you can't and in the next they say you can.
And the madness (pardon me, but it is silly) of trying to do nocturnal dx without a heparin pump because one supplier (nx stage) doesn't agree whilst another supplier (Fresenius) says it's OK.
It does make things hard.

I could be wrong, but here in the US, NxStage has not yet been approved for nocturnal use, hence the problem getting a heparin pump.  If I'm wrong, somebody please correct me, but that is what my husband was told by the head nurse at our clinic.  Some clinics are more amenable to bending the rules in this regard.

[Deanne]

Riki,

I'm sorry for the housing problems you're facing! It's odd that you're neph is driving you away from PD. I live alone / won't have help if I go on dialysis and my neph assumed (correctly) that my choice will be PD if I can't get a pre-emptive transplant. I plan to continue working full-time and PD seems to offer the flexibility I'll need to do so.

[phyl1215]

Not that I every wanted to do dialysis I am very happy with my PD choice of almost 1 yr.  I do the night cycler, 4 cycles/night, takes about 8 hrs. which is fine because that is what I sleep.  Traveling is very easy with the night cycler, we spent a month in Florida last summer (yes summer) and Baxter delivered the solution I needed right on time and I was set for the month.  PD is getting more popular at least at my center.  My center here in Ohio is just great, the staff are so nice and helpful at least on the PD side, I don't know about hemo but I have been over there and they seem the same.  Being alone should not stop you from doing PD, I would really start questioning everyone invoved  Good luck, I don't know if I could do hemo either.

[Riki]

Riki,

I'm sorry for the housing problems you're facing! It's odd that you're neph is driving you away from PD. I live alone / won't have help if I go on dialysis and my neph assumed (correctly) that my choice will be PD if I can't get a pre-emptive transplant. I plan to continue working full-time and PD seems to offer the flexibility I'll need to do so.

I think you may have misunderstood something.  I no longer do PD because I had a very bad peritonitis episode, which made PD impossible.  I was never driven from it by any health professional.  I did PD for about 6 of the 8 years I've been on  dialysis since 1991