To the editor:
When diagnosed with kidney disease and told life-saving dialysis treatment is needed, it is a life-changing experience.
If you do not feel comfortable with a dialysis machine in your home and would feel more secure in a hospital setting, you are told you must make the trip to Williams Lake for treatment.
Depending where you live in the 100 Mile House area, it means a one-hour trip to Williams Lake, a four-hour treatment, and another one-hour trip back to 100 Mile House – three times a week.
It could be longer if you live in a rural area.
This trip can be made in your own vehicle or you ride a HandyDART bus, which leaves Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from the Coach House Square parking lot at 7:45 a.m. returning to the same parking lot. In the winter this trip becomes nerve wracking. Living with the disease is stressful enough without having to travel for the treatment.
The dialysis machine is free.
What is needed is a nurse in the hospital to be trained to deliver the treatment. If a patient and caregiver, who must be present during the four-hour treatment, can be trained in a short amount of time, then training a nurse should not be a problem.
When treatment is done in the home, responsibility is on the patient and caregiver to ensure sanitary conditions, storage of a month’s supply of needed material and the machine.
Our hospital has the room for dialysis treatment.
Statistics state that 1 in 10 of us will be diagnosed with kidney disease.
If you agree, we should be able to have treatment in our hospital where we are comfortable and feel safe with nurses and doctors nearby, please e-mail or phone the individuals below and express your wish for a machine in our hospital.
Heather Cook, RN, Interior Health Authority, Heather.Cook@Interiorhealth.ca, 1-250-870-5842; Greg Leake, executive director, Ministry of Health, Hlth.HSD@gov.bc.ca, 250-952-2326; and B.C. Renal Agency, bcpra@bcpra.ca, 1-604-875-7340.
Donna Brown
Lone Butte
