Surviving dialysis

I'm a resident of Darlington but until recently I was a journalist in Canberra where I worked nine years in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. A long-running degenerative kidney disease finally caught up with me towards the end of last year and forced me out of work, leaving me reliant on regular dialysis sessions, which I receive, courtesy of taxpayers, at Newtown's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

Kidney dialysis is used by thousands of Australians. The cumbersome machines which mimic the function of lost kidneys keep an increasing number of people from meeting an early grave. RPAH alone dialyses dozens of people every day, as do most major hospitals in Sydney.

My busy life as a journalist, writing stories which appear in newspapers and magazines, on radio bulletins and on the TV evening news, has, for the moment at least, slowed to a much different pace. It is a world of blood-cleaning and fluid removal, diet, learning about the human body, learning to live with seven-hour sessions in a renal medicine chair and adapting my life to this new reality.

I was living here in Darlington about 13 years ago when I felt a strange pain in my gut which quickly grew to an unbearable level. A trip to hospital revealed I had kidney stones. Further tests showed I suffered from polycystic kidney disease (PKD) – incurable and destined to lead to kidney failure.

I had heard of PKD. My older sister has it. She has been through the process of dialysis and kidney transplantation. It's an inherited family disease. Of the seven siblings in my family, four have now been confirmed with it.

A PKD sufferer quickly becomes aware of the critical functions of the kidney. When kidneys go wrong, lots of other things in the body bear the brunt. Not long after I was diagnosed, I had kidney stones so bad they blocked off all kidney function. Only a surgical team assembled in the middle of the night at RPAH saved my life.

Later, in Canberra, I endured another symptom – brain aneurysm. Again, sophisticated surgery saved my bacon, though not before a wonderful little medical procedure called an angiogram caused me to have a stroke which for a time paralysed one side of my body and left me barely able to speak.

Every cloud has a silver lining, they say. In my case, ending a somewhat stereotypical lifestyle of a political journalist – working sometimes long and odd hours and making unhealthy lifestyle choices, was replaced by regular exercise, eating and drinking better, losing lots of weight and finally throwing the smokes. I got myself fit for the first time in many years. So fit I swam 20 laps of the Sydney University Olympic pool the night before I started dialysis.

Living in Darlington is great for me. It's within walking distance of the RPAH dialysis unit and the early morning strolls through the university grounds help keep me sane through my new reality of kidney dialysis. And I like Darlington. I lived here for three years in the late '90s and I like the people who live in these streets. There's a community here that makes me feel at home through a difficult stage in my life and while I wait, and hope, for a kidney donation.

Source: South Sydney Herald August 2009 www.southsydneyherald.com.au