Merit Medical
Peritoneal Dialysis Changed Sheri’s Life
As a wife, mother, grandmother, and an active homemaker, Sheri isn’t one to sit still. That’s why she chooses peritoneal dialysis (PD) for her ongoing kidney care.
“I really and truly love PD,” Sheri says. “It’s been such a pleasure to do it as opposed to hemodialysis. I can’t express how much I like it.” Making PD her dialysis treatment of choice has offered her many advantages, such as greater flexibility in her treatment schedule, increased energy, and freedom to travel with her husband.
Dialysis is a treatment that cleans the blood by removing wastes when the kidneys no longer can. As Sheri expressed, there are two types of dialysis treatments available, hemodialysis and PD, and although both treatments clean your blood, how they do so differs.
Hemodialysis works by circulating your blood through tubes to a dialysis machine that cleans it and returns it to your body. PD uses the inner lining of your belly (peritoneum) as a natural filter to clean your blood. Wastes are absorbed and removed by way of a therapeutic fluid called dialysate, which is put in the abdominal cavity, drained, and replaced with fresh fluid through a catheter placed in your belly.
A major PD benefit, especially for Sheri, is that PD is done from the comfort of home, and at a time most convenient for her—while she’s sleeping. Like many others on PD, Sheri chooses to receive dialysis at night, freeing her days to do the things she enjoys. Using a cycler—a machine that slowly fills your belly with dialysate and then empties it out—makes this possible. “On PD, I plug in at nine-thirty or ten at night,” she explains. “Then I get up at seven-thirty or eight. I’m fine. I had a good night’s sleep. ”
Although home hemodialysis is available, many find they have to receive treatment at a hospital or dialysis clinic on a set schedule. Sheri recalls experiencing this PD difference firsthand after sustaining an injury that put her back on hemodialysis for eight weeks. “I forgot, number one, [hemodialysis] is four hours a day, three days a week that you’re sitting in a chair. . . then I’d go home and take a nap because it really wipes you out more than the PD does.”
With a good night’s sleep, more energy, and dialysis on her own terms, Sheri is living her life to the fullest—a life that now includes taking her PD machine on the road and traveling with her husband around the country. “We started traveling more, which I can do on the PD very easy. Two years ago we went to Pennsylvania . . . We went to Atlanta twice because I have two grandkids there. And then down to Phoenix . . . three or four times.”
A round-the-clock advocate for PD, Sheri encourages dialysis patients to talk with their doctors to learn if it’s an option for them. “I’ve been on [PD] for almost three years,” Sheri says. “It’ll change your life.”