How I Used to Think of Dialysis Patients

The other day I had to tell someone that I'm on dialysis. She and her friend were horrified, with expressions that indicated they'd just seen a ghost. And yet to the objective eye, I looked good, even healthy. But what they saw was a cadaver.

I thought back to how I used to think of dialysis patients until just recently. I, too, had thought of them as cadavers, on their way out. Not that I had had that much contact with them, but the few instances stand out in my mind.

Shortly after I delivered Aaron--now almost 23 years ago--my doctor wrote a referral to a nephrologist. This memory is rather dim in some respects, but I remember that his office was in a hemodialysis clinic. The patients were abject and gaunt and much, much older than me, 50 years older. The nephrologist gave me a mildly inappropriate examination, palpating my belly over and over again, and resting his hand on my vulva as he spoke to me. I suppose I was the youngest thing he'd seen at the clinic in a very long time.

After that, I didn't see a nephrologist for maybe 15 years. In retrospect, no doubt a mistake.

I did have a student in one of my classes at Cal State in the late '80s who was a dialysis patient. She was perhaps in her early or mid-30s. When she explained her situation to me, I automatically thought of her days as numbered, even though she didn't look sick.

And then there was my friend Georgette's mom. I never met her, but I knew she was on dialysis. And then she died.

Now things are different, now that I'm one of the undead! I realize I have health challenges, and I know what the odds are--the average life span on dialysis is five years, the wait for a cadaver's kidney in So Cal is nine years. But even so, I sure don't feel that death is breathing down my neck.

An old lesson learned once again: Viewing the world from the inside out is a lot different than seeing it from the outside and imagining the interior.