Dialysis Patient Teaches Youth Basketball to Keep Strongby Joe Hart
BURLEIGH –– Jose “Tony” Tejada sits for over three hours a day, three days a week hooked up to a dialysis machine, but it hasn’t stopped him from helping youngsters work on their jump shots and rebounding skills.
Tejada, like 10,000 other people in this state, is suffering from chronic kidney failure and must receive regular dialysis treatments to live. For the last seven months, since moving to Whitesboro from New York City, he’s been treated at Fresenius Medical Care of Cape May Court House.
Shellee Henson, a nurse at Fresenius, said Tejada was one of 70 patients that use the facility. She explained how the dialysis machine worked, acting as Tejada’s kidneys by filtering excess fluid and toxins from his blood.
Mike Hainesworth, a Fresenius social worker, said the change in lifestyle and diet can be difficult for dialysis patients to take.
In 2002 when Tejada first discovered he was ill, he was devastated by the traumatic news. It was difficult for him because he had been a youth basketball coach for 20 years and was depressed knowing his life had changed so drastically.
“I did nothing,” he told the Herald. “I didn’t even leave the house for two years.”
Then in 2005, Sheila, his wife of 39 years, finally talked him into going outside and he now thanks her for it every day.
“I was walking around my neighborhood and saw a couple kids leaning on a fence and watching other kids play a basketball game,” he said. “I asked them why they weren’t playing and they said they didn’t know how.”
He told the boys to come back to the court the next day and he would teach them how to play. Those two boys grew to more than a dozen and Tejada started an instructional basketball camp the next summer.
“I realized that the kids give me the strength to go on,” he said. “When I’m out on the court, I don’t think about my condition. I just focus on the game.”
Fresenius Medical Care Area Manager Linda Walck said what Tejada went through is not unusual.
“Learning you have to go on dialysis is such a life-changing event, patients often become depressed,” she said. “That’s why we encourage our patients to continue to work or, if they’re retired, to lead the same active life they did before dialysis.”
Walck also said it’s important for people to try to head off renal disease before their kidneys fail and they need dialysis.
“Those with diabetes, hypertension and a family history of chronic kidney disease should see their doctors regularly as they are at greater risk,” she said.
Since March is National Kidney Month, Fresenius is encouraging people to take steps to keep their kidneys healthy and to detect kidney disease early.
“The symptoms of kidney disease are often overlooked,” Dr. Joseph Pulliam, a vice president at Fresenius Medical Care, said in a recent press release.
Walck said 90 percent of the patients treated at the Court House facility are sent from hospitals in emergent situations and only 10 percent come in prepared having worked with their doctors getting ready for treatment.
Fresenius would like to change those statistics.
“We’d much rather have our patients educated on their disease and prepared for the treatments,” Walck said.
That is why the local Fresenius clinic is in the process of developing a partnership with Cape Regional Medical Center to start an educational treatment options program to prevent or postpone the need for dialysis treatments.
Fresenius offers these five tips to help prevent Chronic Kidney Disease:
• See your doctor regularly, especially if you have diabetes, high blood pressure or a family history of kidney disease. Keeping your diabetes and blood pressure under control may help prevent CKD or slow it down.
• If you smoke, quit. Smoking can accelerate kidney disease.
• Work with your doctor and healthcare team. Tell them about any changes in your health.
• Follow all medication and diet changes prescribed by your doctor.
• Take an active role in your healthcare. Educate yourself about kidney disease and its treatments.
“Even if you already have chronic kidney disease, there are many things you can do to slow down the damage,” Pulliam said. “By following these five tips, you can take an active role in keeping your kidneys as healthy as possible.”
For more information on kidney health or treatment options, visit Fresenius at
www.ultracare-dialysis.com.
As for Tony Tejada, he brought his hoops knowledge with him from the Big Apple to Whitesboro, where he is planning a free basketball camp this summer despite his condition.
The Tejada Youth Sports Foundation Basketball Camp will be held at the outdoor courts at the Martin Luther King Center on Main Street in Whitesboro May through August on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon and on Sundays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
The camp is for boys and girls who Tejada said range in age from six to 12 years old.
“I focus on the fundamentals,” he said. “Whether the kids already know how to play or not, we stick with the basics.”
Tejada wanted to thank the Concerned Citizens of Whitesboro, a local civic group, for helping to fund his camp, but said he is still looking for additional financial support.
He plans to give the kids t-shirts, water bottles and gym bags, but the more support he gets the better he can make it for the kids.
Tejada offers the camp free of charge as a service to the parents of the community, he said.
For more information or to support the camp, call Tejada at (646) 924-8151.
Contact Hart at (609) 886-8600 Ext 35 or at: jhart@cmcherald.com
http://www.capemaycountyherald.com/article/26072-dialysis-patient-teaches-youth-basketball-keep-strongPhoto by Joe Hart Dialysis patient Jose “Tony” Tejada sits with staff members Bonny Werntz, left, and Shellee Henson, right, at Fresenius Medical Care of Cape May Court House on March 12.
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