Kidney Walk 2011

I’ve decided to participate in the Kidney Walk 2011 in Ft. Worth.  I decided to do this in honor of my mother who currently suffers from end stage kidney disease.

For those that don’t know, this means that she has to endure dialysis 3 times a week for 4.25 hours.  Basically, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are ruined for her.  She has to spend those four and  a quarter hours on a machine which takes all of her blood and filters it through a dialyzer which is a semi-permeable membrane that emulates the kidneys.  Her scheduled time for dialysis is from 11AM-3PM every day but with all the waiting and such, plus the extra fifteen minutes, she rarely gets out before 4PM.  There is no cure for kidney failure and the only way to fix it is to get a kidney transplant.  This walk encourages you to go get screened for kidney problems early because they ARE treatable but once the kidneys fail, they rarely recover and heal.

Be healthy and take care of your kidneys!

If you’d like to sponsor me or my team in this endeavorer, you can check out our donate page at http://donate.kidney.org/goto/ahanselka and donate online. You can choose to release your name or remain anonymous with your donation.  Any and all amounts are welcome as no amount is too small to help! 😀

Below is a dialysis machine.