We have lost another one.

[Charlie B53]

Sadly, my clinic lost another one over the weekend.

As I came in this morning there are Flowers and a note on the Reception counter.

Frank sat in the chair next to me.  Always had a smile and pleasant greeting.

RIP Frank, you have earned the Rest.

Prayers for Family as this was very unexpected.

[kristina]

Hello Charlie, I am so sorry to read about your dialysis-neighbour Frank.
... Whenever one of us can't go on any longer, it hits us very much and also brings it clearly home to us, how dangerous ESRF is and in what a dangerous situation ESRF eventually may bring us into  ... 

[UkrainianTracksuit]

Really sorry to hear this, Charlie. This is one of the worst parts of dialysis. We develop a sort of camaraderie with our chair mates, knowing we are in this lot for a reason, and it hurts when one of them is missing. Frank is free now. 

[SooMK]

I'm so sorry.

[MooseMom]

This is very sad news.  Condolences to everyone who loved Frank.

[Riki]

We had two in the last week.  One, Sheldon, has Cystic Fibrosis, and was in his mid 40s, so he lived a lot longer than was probably expected of him.  The other, Carol, was in her mid 50s.  She also had heart issues.  With her passing, I am the only one left from the old clinic that closed in 2013.  The rest have either died or have been transplanted.  It's a little weird for me.

I expect another soon.  These tend to go in 3s

[Paul]

My Sympathies.

[Rerun]

RIP Frank.  Prayers for your family.

 

[kickingandscreaming]

Sadly, we will all eventually go the way of the Franks of the world.  May we stretch it out as much as possible.

[kitkatz]

It does bring it home that this is a disease that can and will eventually take us out.  MY sympathies to you and your center.

[cassandra]

 


 


 

[GA_DAWG]

Sometimes we get into the routine of dialysis and forget the possibilities, though it seems it is far too quickly driven home again for us in this way. We also lost one of ours. He had had a heart attack a couple years earlier, but hd seemingly gotten past that. He began to have more and more difficulty making tit through a session. He had a really bad one on a Wed, and was not here on time of Friday. He came in late, obviously not for a treatment. He stopped by the chairs of some of us to tell us he had gone to the doctor after that really bad treatment, and they had discovered something worse. I presumed cancer though he never said explicitly and I did not want to ask. He had asked the doctor if he had to continue dialysis, and been told it would only make a matter of a week or two difference. I don't know if it was the lack of dialysis or his owther problem he succumbed to, but he was gone in only a couple of weeks. It feels so wrong to say at least he did not suffer a long time, but at times I don't know how else to put it.

[Michael Murphy]

This seems to be what Bill Peckham was showing us live each day to the fullest and enjoy your life to the fullest, with a little of Satchel Page don’t look back to see what’s catch up.

[Riki]

This seems to be what Bill Peckham was showing us live each day to the fullest and enjoy your life to the fullest, with a little of Satchel Page don’t look back to see what’s catch up.

That is what I try to do.  It's why I travel, it's why I went back to school.  I want to do as much as I can now, while I'm able, because you never know how long that will last.

I lost my first fellow patient when I was 12.  It was a 5 yr old boy who'd been transplanted.  He'd only had the kidney about 2 weeks, and he was just learning how to live with one, because he never had before.  There was a complication, the way it was explained to us was that the kidney his mother gave him was too big for him.  That was probably the simplest explanation to give to a group of kids who wanted to know what happened to their friend.  It was then that I realized just how serious this disease is and what happened to him could happen to any of us.  It's a lessen most of us don't learn until we are adults.  It's stuck with me nearly 30 years, and I still think about him, and others I've lost along the way, every once in a while.