A new lease on life for victims of kidney failure

Feb 19, 2017 News

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By Sharmain Grainger

For many of us, putting our lives on hold even for a single day is not an option. However,

it is pretty much this state of affairs that many of our family members, friends and other individuals inflicted with kidney failure are forced to deal with every day. This is usually due to the very debilitating nature of this medical condition.
Each of us is born with two kidneys. However, kidney failure occurs when the function of these organs to filter toxins from the blood become impaired.
This condition, according to medical officials, can come in two forms – acute kidney injury which can be reversible with adequate treatment and chronic kidney disease which, even with treatment, can have fatal outcomes.
Kidney failure in either form does not discriminate against race, gender, age, religion or even status, just ask Tomol Mingo, Ellisya Persaud or even Abdool Shakeer, who have all fought valiant battles against chronic kidney disease.
Some of the very noticeable effects of this condition include issues with the production of urine and in some cases persons start to retain fluids often causing them to become visibly swollen.
Without as much as three sessions of dialysis per week, a person suffering from chronic kidney failure could develop complications and die. Essentially, dialysis is the clinical filtering of the blood using a machine.
Mingo, Persaud and Shakeer all come from various backgrounds and sections of the country, but have all suffered from this condition that has over the decades deprived many families of able-bodied members or even caused them to prematurely take the journey to the great beyond.

But they can hopefully be regarded as overcomers, given the fact that they were all recently given a new lease on life. Each was blessed to have a relative who was willing to donate a kidney to them and turned out to be a suitable match for transplant surgery.
Their surgeries, which have been deemed successful, were all done earlier this month at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). The surgeries were led by a team of experts from the Calgary Medical Center of Canada, which was ably supported by GPHC’s Kidney Surgeon, Dr. Kishore Persaud, and a team of nurses.
There are many people suffering from kidney failure who question why the universe had dealt them such a “bad hand”.
According to Ellisya Persaud, for instance, she asked “why me?” on many occasions before she gradually started to accept her fate.
The 20-year-old, who hails from Henrietta Village on the Essequibo Coast, remembers all too well the day she was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease.
She recalled that it was after the manifestations of several symptoms in her body and many tests later, she was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. It was October 14, 2014 that the diagnosis was made.

Her symptoms were mild, but gradually developed to unbearable proportions. At the time she was a second-year teacher in training at the Turkeyen campus of the Cyril Potter College of Education.
“I started to feel feverish one day and then I remember I started to gain weight, but it was more like swelling…I couldn’t lie on my back and breathe sometimes and that was when I knew that something was really wrong,” she said during an interview.
Persaud recalled being shuttled back to the Essequibo Coast by her mother Elsa, who was convinced that she could nurse her daughter back to health there. But the symptoms only became worse and there was an undeniable need for Persaud to seek medical attention.
At the Suddie Hospital on the Essequibo Coast she was examined extensively before the source of her symptoms were identified.
“My feet were swollen and I had backache. At first they thought I had Chikungunya (a mosquito-borne virus). They checked my blood count and it was six and so they admitted me then they tested my blood pressure and it was sky high, so they decided to do the kidney function tests and realised my kidneys were not working as they should,” Persaud recounted.
The following day she was transferred to the GPHC where she received her first session of dialysis.
But given the number of persons that the GPHC has been catering to over the years, Persaud soon found herself accessing dialysis at the Doobay Medical Centre at Annandale on the East Coast of Demerara.
In fact she joined a plethora of patients who were referred there by the GPHC.
Although eligible for some financial support from the Ministry of Health for the cost of dialysis at the East Coast Medical Centre, Persaud found that travelling alone was very costly.
In order to address this challenge she decided to relocate to Cummings Lodge, Greater Georgetown, which effectively shortened the distance between accessing dialysis and attending clinic at the GPHC.
“I had my good days and I had my bad days too,” said Persaud as she remembered dialysis sessions and reflected on her parents being her biggest supporters.
Although she had accepted dialysis as a routine part of her life, Persaud couldn’t help but research about the medical possibilities that exist for chronic kidney failure patients like herself.
Even before Dr. Kishore who conducted the clinic she attended at the GPHC suggested that she considered a kidney transplant, Persaud said that she was already contemplating this possibility.
Although her father Deodat initially volunteered to be her donor, medical complications did not allow this to be possible. Instead, moves were made to have her 22-year-old brother, Romaul Persaud, be her cross-matching candidate instead. Cross-matching is done to determine that the recipient and the donor are compatible to improve the chance of a successful transplant surgery.
Persaud along with two other patients – Mingo and Shakeer – received their new kidneys during the week of February 5-11, 2017. All of the donors were discharged days after the surgery and are healing well.
In the case of 16-year-old Mingo, his mother, 39-year-old Shaundel was the donor.
From his hospital bed where he lay recovering Friday, Mingo of Charles Street, Charlestown Georgetown, remembered being full of life and a promising football player who competed well for his school, Charlestown Secondary.
But like Persaud, the discomforting symptoms associated with chronic kidney failure that he developed forced him to not only quit the game, but school as well.
He too remembers when he was diagnosed.
“It was January 29, 2016,” disclosed Mingo, as he in reflective mode said that he thought that the symptoms he developed almost overnight were because of a cold.
”My eyes were swollen and every day I started to gain weight…I had so much fluid in my body I was feeling like I was overloading, so mommy took me to the hospital and they run some tests and they told me my Blood urea nitrogen (BUN) to creatinine was sky high,” recalled Mingo.
Blood urea nitrogen level is an indicator of kidney function. Creatinine is produced from creatine, a molecule of major importance for energy production in muscles.
The ratio of BUN to creatinine is usually between 10:1 and 20:1, but an increased ratio may be due to a condition that causes a decrease in the flow of blood to the kidneys.
Moreover, the BUN-to-creatinine ratio generally provides more precise medical personnel with information about kidney function and its possible underlying cause compared with creatinine level alone.
Although he was undergoing weekly dialysis at the Woodlands Hospital and attending Dr. Kishore’s clinic at the GPHC, Mingo developed some daunting complications which included severely high blood pressure. In fact his blood pressure surged so sharply months before his transplant that it caused a blood vessel in his right eye to rupture. That eye has since become impaired. Transplant was the most viable option for Mingo.
While Persaud and Shakeer were admitted days before surgery, Mingo was admitted long before to safeguard him from any possible infection and further complication.
Shakeer, a resident of Diamond New Scheme, East Bank Demerara, who also shared a bit about his experience ahead his transplant surgery, said that nine months ago he was diagnosed with chronic kidney failure. But unlike the others, the symptoms of the 52-year-old father of four were just constant weakness and shortness of breath.
Symptoms of renal failure can include: fatigue – being tired all of the time; feeling cold – when others are warm; shortness of breath – after very little effort; feeling faint, dizzy, or weak; trouble thinking clearly; feeling very itchy; swelling in hands or feet; swollen or puffy face, among others.
Shakeer’s donor was the second of his four children, 28-year-old Imran Shakeer.
“He was the first one to volunteer to give me one of his kidneys,” said Shakeer of his son.
And he is especially grateful to have a second chance at a good quality of life since according to him, “I just couldn’t imagine doing dialysis for the rest of my life…some days were just too painful.”
Once recovered, each of the kidney recipients has high expectations for their future. While Persaud intends to complete her training and become a dedicated educator, Mingo hopes that he can complete his secondary studies and pursue studies in medicine so that he too can help to make a difference in the lives of ailing people. Shakeer on the other hand hopes that he will be able to regain his position at the reputable firm where he held a position as a supervisor before falling ill.
Ensuring that people are reintegrated into society and are able to become productive citizens is the very aim of offering a service such as kidney transplant at the GPHC, according to Nurse Deborah Patterson. Patterson is the Nurse in Charge of the Female High Dependency Unit which was designated the recovery room for the transplant patients.
“Each of them can go on with their lives. This process not only gives new life to these patients but it saves Government a lot of money. Dialysis is expensive, transportation is expensive and they have to get public assistance because they cannot work. Every time they are admitted they need medication and their stay here is covered by government, so this is a ‘win win’ situation for the patients and government,” Patterson underscored.
According to Nurse Patterson too, with a kidney transplant as much as 15 years can be added to a patient’s life, and that in itself is a laudable feat.

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