Octogenarian does dialysis at home

BROWNSVILLE – Lorenza Arrona can watch her telenovelas, go for a walk, and spend time with her grandchildren, all while she’s on dialysis.

Arrona, 84, uses peritoneal dialysis instead of the more common hemodialysis in which patients must go to a clinic three times a week and are hooked up to a machine that filters their blood for toxins.

With peritoneal dialysis, a bag of solution is attached to a catheter in the patient’s abdomen, explained Lynda Gallegos and Mercedes Guardado, both registered nurses at Fresenius Medical Care at 1900 N Expressway 77.

Fresenius provides the solution and equipment for Arrona and other patients to do their dialysis at home.

Fresenius also teaches patients how to manage the process. In peritoneal dialysis, the solution is pumped into a patient’s abdomen and absorbs toxins from the arteries and blood vessels in the peritoneal membrane. After three hours, the solution with the toxins are emptied into another bag and disposed of.

“I was the one that insisted to do the dialysis here at home,” said Arrona, who lives with her daughter Martha Sanchez, her son-in-law, and three of her grandchildren.

“That same day I got the PD catheter put in, I came out of the hospital,” she said. “Me and my daughter were trained for one week and then we started it at home.”

She does three exchanges per day. During that time, she gets to watch her favorite telenovelas.

“I like my soaps,” she said with a laugh. “La Dueña, La Rosa de Guadalupe, Llena de Amor, and the news on Telemundo.”

“She sees everything,” said young Isabel, a friend of Lorenza’s granddaughter, Maryal Sanchez, age 8.

Gallegos said Arrona, who has been on dialysis a little more than two years, has had family members that went with the hemodialysis and she didn’t like the way they felt.

Arrona is glad she can be with her family while she’s on dialysis.

“There’s nothing difficult about it,” she said. “My daughter basically is already trained to do the dialysis for me, and any questions I have, she can call the nurses.”

Gallegos contrasted the procedure with hemodialysis.

“It’s a more natural way of doing dialysis,” she said. “You use the peritoneal membrane as a filter. It’s done everyday, just like kidneys.”

However, it can’t all be done at home. Because many dialysis patients can become anemic, they must receive regular injections of a drug such as Epogen or Procrit.

“They get this injection sometimes three times a week, some patients do it twice a week, some people once a week,” said Guardado. “She (Arrona) comes in once a week for an Epogen shot.”

Many patients are too apprehensive to do their own dialysis at home. They would rather have it done in a clinic under a nurse’s supervision. Not so with Arrona, and the arrangement also works well for Arrona’s daughter, who would otherwise have to take her mother to a clinic for dialysis.

“It’s very convenient for me because I have a lot of responsibilities, my house, my daughters, my husband, and my mom, and I have everything here,” she said. “I need to take to take care of all my family members.”