Does dialysis make you feel better? Can you sleep better? Does food and drink taste better?

[KGsrKGsr]

How Does Dialysis Help

[Cap21_NKF Partner]

Dialysis is one of two treatments for patients with kidney failure. The patient is hooked up to a dialyzer that acts as an artificial kidney, filtering the patient's blood as a normally functioning kidney would. Consult with your doctor about treatment options if you are in end stage renal disease.

[Kbristow]

Yes! Dialysis made me feel better! Dialysis does some of the things that kidneys do so it isn't a replacement for kidneys. But it helped to remove some of the toxins and excess fluid from my body. Food no longer tasted metallic; my appetite came back; my body stopped itching all over (from the excess phosphorous); and I no longer had moments of "brain fog". But I was still tired (though probably not as tired as I would've been if I hadn't started dialysis). I also did peritoneal dialysis, which is done everyday for longer periods of time so it's more gentle and more consistent than in-center hemodialysis. It functions more like real kidneys would which of course functions 24 hours/day everyday. I never experienced the crashes after dialysis where you're completely wiped out and you go home and just sleep.

As far as sleeping better, I don't remember too much. (my dialysis was 6 years ago). I probably slept okay before and after I started dialysis. However being on PD overnight with the cycler, the machine would sometimes wake me up in the middle of the night once it started buzzing and humming to do a fluid exchange. That would sometimes disrupt my sleep because I would experience occasional cramping, plus the noise would wake me. Then I would have to shift my body to find a position where I could minimize or stop the pain. I still preferred that to the daytime manual peritoneal dialysis because nighttime was more convenient. But I certainly felt better after I started dialysis.

[WYOAnne NKF Ambassador]

I know you have posted a lot of questions on this site lately. What I would recommend, you should write down all of your questions and make an appt with your nephrologist and get your answers. What I did when I knew that dialysis was coming up in my future, I found out the dialysis center my nephrologist was associated with. I called them, made an appt to come in and asked the nurse and social worker there a lot of the questions that I had. I left feeling a lot better about the whole process.You should realize that we are all different in how we react. I have had a transplant and the transplant doctors start everyone at a certain dose of your immunosuppressant meds. Because it wasn't the "right" dose for me, they had to adjust it several times that first year. So it is with dialysis, or CKD in general - doctors have to work with us to get us on the right diet, the right medication, etc.

This January and February I got my 1st & 2nd dose of the COVID vaccine. After the 2nd shot I started running a low grade fever for 4 months. My temp never went above 101, but made me feel awful. My nephrologist started calling other docs around the country and no one had heard of that reaction in a transplant recipient. One day, the fever just stopped. I guess I am telling you that just to let you know how different we can all be.

Take care of yourself and hope you get your questions answered.