Health

Current Health Concerns

May 2, 2009

The current news about Swine Flu Virus has been the subject of discussion on our dialysis clinic recently. Concern and unrest seems to be the general consensus, and for good reason, I might say. It’s because we dialysis patients are immunocompromised, meaning our immune system is down and it would be quite difficult for us [...]

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Are Your Kidneys Okay?

April 27, 2009

CKD can go unnoticed because your kidneys have a lot of spare work capacity. Your kidneys may be able to lose more than 75 percent of their ability to function before you realize that anything’s wrong. Consequently, CKD can be quite advanced before it’s discovered. That spells trouble not only for your kidneys but for [...]

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Poverty: One of the Causes of Death of Dialysis Patients

April 25, 2009

“Bawal Magkasakit” (It is forbidden to get sick). You can see this words on Ad campaign billboards by the DOH, the Philippines’ national health agency, and on most of their TV Ads. This rings true for most Filipinos, and is a bitter fact among us dialysis patients. It’s not news anymore to hear that a [...]

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Exercise Your Way To Dialysis Fitness

April 23, 2009

Dialysis patients have to maintain a certain ideal weight that is established by their clinic’s medical staff. This is called Dry Weight. The excess weight you accumulate in between dialysis sessions would be your Weight Gain and that’s what will be removed from you during treatment in order to attain your Goal or dry weight. [...]

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Beat The Heat

April 15, 2009

Summer is one of the seasons we dialysis patients dread. It’s because the intense heat that this season brings makes us want to drink more water to quench our thirst. This is not possible for us patients because we cannot get rid of the excess water we take due to our malfunctioning kidneys. If we [...]

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FAQ’s Part IV

April 6, 2009

How is dialysis done? Dialysis is done by using a special fluid called dialysate. Dialysate, a mixture of pure water and chemicals, is carefully controlled to pull wastes out of your blood without removing substances your body needs. A semipermeable membrane keeps the blood apart from the dialysate. This membrane lets the wastes and fluid [...]

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AV Fistula – The Dialysis Lifeline

April 2, 2009

In every dialysis session, a patient’s blood is cleaned through a dialysis machine. The process is quite simple: the machine is hooked through bloodlines in the arm, blood is pumped through the machine, cleaned, and then returned to the patient. This is a continous process in which only 300 millileters  of blood per minute is [...]

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In Session

March 30, 2009

I went to the clinic yesterday for another dialysis treatment session. Travel from the house to the facility was a bit of a hassle due to a sudden drizzle. Can you imagine that? Rain in the middle of summer and at noontime. Well, that’s Philippine climate for you, unpredictable as they can be. I forgot [...]

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Chronic Illness… Chronic Coping

March 29, 2009

Yesterday was my Dialysis schedule. Everything went well for me, in a ‘kidney failure patient’ sense of ‘well’, in any case. For us, patients that is, going to dialysis sessions has become somewhat of a routine. Even the pain, the Hypotensive experiences and bouts of cramps, has been part of my life ever since the [...]

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