Needing dialysis

Richard Parsons thought he was out of the woods.

After two years of dialysis, he received a kidney and pancreas transplant eight years ago.

But after organ rejection, he found out a month ago he would need to start dialysis again.

So he returned to the Permian Basin Dialysis Center, where, like 175 other patients, he undergoes hemodialysis for four hours, three times a week.

Parsons, 54, said he was depressed initially.

“I put it off as long as I could,” he said. “I knew myself that I needed it. It was just a matter of accepting it again. Once I accepted it, I was alright with it.”

It’s common for patients to be depressed when learning they will have to have dialysis, said Dr. Larry Oliver, the facility’s medical director.

“You go through the same stages of grief anyone else would go through,” he said. “But, eventually, the process — which diffuses toxins from the body when kidneys experience renal disease — makes them feel better.

“Most people do fairly well,” Oliver said. “Some go to work. A couple guys I play golf with always beat me.”

Dialysis is typically needed for patients who have less than 10 percent kidney function.

THE CENTER

The number of patients the dialysis center treats has increased since its first location opened three decades ago. That 10-chair facility was on the site where Medical Center Hospital’s Wheatley Stewart Medical Pavilion now stands.

In 1985, it moved to a 25-chair center where a television station now broadcasts near Midland International Airport. Its current 35-chair facility opened in 1996 in a strip mall on East Eighth Street.

But Oliver said the dialysis center has outgrown that, too.

Next year, parent company Fresenius Medical plans to replace it with a new 17,000-square-foot building near the location of the original. It’s being built where Broncho Chevrolet once stood near MCH.

Part of the need for the new building comes from an increase in the number of people suffering from kidney failure. By 2010, Oliver said between 600,000 and 650,000 Americans would suffer from renal disease, up from 400,000 in 2000.

Reasons for the increase include people living longer and an increase in diabetes, Oliver said. Of those suffering from renal disease, 48 percent have diabetes and 35 percent have hypertension.

“We’re running out of space,” Oliver said. “We have more and more people. We can’t make our employees work 24 hours a day.”

Oliver declined to give the total cost of the new facility, but the proposed cost of its building permit is $4 million, according to city records.

That doesn’t include the cost of equipment. And with each of its 50 stations possibly including televisions and DVD players, along with heated massaging chairs, the cost could be substantial.

“I think that will make it more comfortable,” patient Brent Amonett said.

PATIENT CARE

Amonett, 45, has been coming to the dialysis center for about nine months. He said he needed treatment after a sudden onset of renal disease, which didn’t allow him the opportunity to come to grips with his situation.

But he’s remained active. Amonett is a nurse at Medical Center, something he said his condition as a dialysis patient helps him with.

“You have more compassion,” he said. “It lets you know what they’re going through. You know it could be you one of these days.”

The average patient lives about five years after coming to the dialysis center, Oliver said. Despite that, they have patients who’ve been coming there more than 25 years.

Oliver, or one of two other nephrologists and a nurse practitioner, tries to see each patient during their session. That means they’re seen 12 times a month, while the state minimum requirement is two.

So seeing patients several times a week for years at a time can mean the nephrologists get to know patients a bit better than typical doctors.

“They become our friends,” Oliver said. “When it’s time for them to move out of this world, it’s a sad day.”

“And that goes for the rest of the staff,” clinical manager Robbie Smart said.

Mary Ann Drennan, who oversees the home therapy program at the dialysis center, said she has many fond memories of patients.

“You learn a lot about a person,” she said. “You talk with them and teach them to be compliant with their treatment.”

Drennan said the facility offers two types of home therapy. Peritoneal dialysis, which about 10 people use through the Odessa facility, allows patients to undergo treatment in their own home.

Home hemo treatment is also available, in which patients set up a full machine with monitors and plumbing. Because costs can reach $25,000, no one currently uses this treatment.

Some patients are eligible to get on a transplant waiting list, the only way out of dialysis. Oliver said that yearly, between five and eight of the dialysis center’s patients get transplants.

Currently, 15 of the center’s patients are on the waiting list, he said.

Oliver said the staff is “ecstatic” whenever a patient gets a successful transplant.

“It’s one of the happiest things that happens around here,” he said. “I’ve actually had them dance out there.”

And then there are patients like Parsons, who get a transplant but still have to return someday. He said most of the patients who used the center during his first go round are gone now.

Still, he likes the way his body feels when he’s done with treatment.

“You go through a little bit of depression for a while,” he said. “But I knew I’d be better off once I got started on dialysis.”

HAVING KIDNEY FAILURE?

Permian Basin Dialysis Center has meetings each month to discuss options for people needing dialysis treatment.

The next meetings will be:

>> 3:30 p.m. Dec. 17 at 1501 E. Eighth St. in Odessa.

>> 3:30 p.m. Dec. 18 at 4200 W. Illinois Ave. in Midland.