11/04/2023
It’s been a while since we’ve made a post regarding Dirk’s kidney struggle and our hope to find a kidney donor, so here’s an update. Our last post described the training he went through to do at home hemodialysis. We are happy to report that he is doing well with this process, but it takes a rigid schedule to achieve success. He starts the week on Sunday by planning, shopping, and making his meals for the week. Sunday night he starts his first dialysis session for the week and the rest of the week he works 7:00-4:00, eats dinner at 4:00, walks his dog at 4:30, gets the dialysis machine primed and gathers all the supplies he needs at 5:00, he then is ready to starts the dialysis process around 6:00. If everything goes smoothly he generally finishes up dialysis around 9:15. He then still has to pull the needles and apply pressure for 30 minutes for the sites to clot. Either Mike or I go over to his house during this process to help him clean up and make sure his blood has clotted and he’s feeling okay before we leave. We generally end leave right around 10:00. We do this Sunday through Thursday to get a few free days on the weekend.
In this post we thought we’d tell you about what the diet is like for a person on dialysis. A person’s kidneys do several functions, but mainly kidneys remove waste products and excess fluid from the body through a person’s urine. For the body to produce urine, the kidneys have to complete some highly complex steps of execration and absorption. Through this process they balance a person’s body fluids, regulate the body’s blood pressure, produce vitamin D, control the production of red blood cells, eliminate drugs from the body and maintain a stable balance of the body’s chemicals. It regulates the body’s sodium, potassium, phosphorous, and calcium metabolism. The body filters ½ cup of blood through the kidneys every minute. As you can see the kidneys are a vital part of the body function.
When a person’s kidneys function correctly the kidneys make the needed adjustments to clear or maintain the chemicals that come from one’s diet. However if your kidneys aren’t functioning you are depending on dialysis to make these adjustments. However dialysis on its own will not be enough, your diet will need to change also to keep the boy’s chemical balance at healthy levels. Your sodium intake will need to extremely low. No fast or processed foods. Calcium has a tendency to build up in your system so dairy products like cheese and ice cream are out. The next concern is too high of phosphorous which is again found in process foods, chocolate and dark sodas. Potassium which is found in foods such as potatoes, oranges, bananas, beans, spinach, avocados, and cantaloupe (all foods you would consider healthy) have to be limited because they will elevate your potassium to unhealthy levels. The one thing he gets and needs to eat is protein because it is needed to keep his blood level up. Making meals becomes a lot more complex when you have to follow all these diet restrictions. I am please to tell you though, Dirk is a pretty good cook and he does a pretty good job making almost all of his meals and sticking to these restrictions. He has to take blood draws regularly to send in to have all these different levels checked, and so far he has been doing fine. Sunday is the day he cooks and gets his meals ready for the week. This helps keep him on track diet wise and also keep on his nightly schedule.
As his parents we are really proud of how he is handling everything he is dealing with. As parents it is also probably easier for us to ask for help. Please consider being a donor. If you are a healthy person you can live a normal life with one kidney and you could give the gift of a fairly normal life back to Dirk. Register to be a living donor at: mhealth.donorscreen.org or call 612-625-5115. Thank you to those of you who have already tried to be a donor, we thank you for your selflessness. We also ask those of you reading this to please share this post with others, we really are hoping to expand our donor search. Thank-you.
I’m including a few pictures. 1-This is Dirk’s dinners for the week. He has them all made and dished up, he just need to heat them up. 2-This is what Mike and I do when we are waiting for dialysis to finish up. We occupy this guy and attend to his needs. 3-These two are always ready to reunite after the 4 hour process. This dog could not have come at a better time for Dirk.
