Blood Intimate Blood

Blood is a very intimate thing, so you can hardly blame me for feeling a bit shy and hesitant about sharing the sight of my  blood with the world. Usually it is unseen inside the body. In the case of hemo-dialysis*, blood must flow outside the body in order to pass through the artificial kidney and then return, cleansed of toxins and fluid overload back into the bloodstream. 

Bamboo Shoots Inc crew on behalf of Sasktel MaxTV at dialysis pod.

Can you blame me for being shy and nervous about showing my blood -outside of my body- to the world? I am concerned...will the sight of this be more traumatic to the viewers as it was at first to me?

Blood having "Out-of-Body Experience".

I had to shed my misgivings before I could go ahead with filming this segment of the documentary. Our producer Amanda Bosiak was so warm and loving that everything flowed effortlessly on set. The "set" was my dialysis pod, at my request to raise more Awareness of Kidney Health. 

*Hemo-dialysis is a technological marvel, invented by Dr. Willim Kolf in 1943, that has come a long way to recreate kidney function. Dialysis sustains the lives of millions of kidney patients every year. Dialysis is the "Gold Standard" for life-saving intervention while hopefully, they await the "Gift of Life". This time of relative "stability" must not be mistaken for "complacency", as it is well known that a certain % of dialysis patients die while waiting for a transplant. 

Dialysis: The Grim Reality

At the dialysis unit on Friday , January 16th, 2015. "Stayin' Alive!" is my mantra and theme song.

The grim reality of hemodialysis...which is a fact of life for over 3 million 

Canadians (translates to over 30 million Americans) is this: one needle 

(attached to a tube) allows the dirty blood out, then passes through the 

machine (with kidney filter), then back...(cleansed of toxins that build up 

between therapies in the case of "kidney failure") through a second tube 

to be returned into the bloodstream. This 3x a week treatment is 

sustaining me and all the millions of dialysis patients, keeping us alive!  

Precarious maybe, but it's the best chance we all have to stay alive 

while awaiting our second chance at a "normal life"...which is a kidney 

transplant.


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