My father’s kidney failure

My father who has kidney failure has been on dialysis for a long time. He has turned down the offer of a kidney transplant. I want to know if he can live on dialysis forever.

Garuba (by SMS)

Well, it isn’t so much a matter of can or cannot, he will have to be on dialysis if he doesn’t want to die. Most people who are on the wait list for a kidney essentially need to be in dialysis. Dialysis is pretty involved. In the sense that you are essentially adding a machine into the blood flow that will remove certain impurities that the kidneys would have.

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It is something that people have to schedule their lives around. Since this involves an extended period of time, multiple times per month, that increases the likelihood of getting an infection that can do him great harm. Another factor would be the staffing of the clinics or businesses offering dialysis services.

Some have full medical staff while others just have people trained to insert the needle and start the process. The ideal thing would be to get a transplant. But even if you want one, that doesn’t mean you will get one when you need one.

Better to be on the list than not as either way, he will be on dialysis. I mean, from the moment your dialysis treatment ends, the body will start building up toxins and the person will feel progressively worse until their next session.