Page 10 - NKF-KL-issue-14-Autumn-2016-for-web

As the move to offer dialysing kidney patients their choice of modality gathers pace,

many units and patients are rediscovering the benefits and freedom offered by home

haemodialysis. Amy Alexander-Nunns is a patient at the Wessex Kidney Centre and,

apart from the dream of not having to dialyse at all, now wouldn’t choose to dialyse

any other way. Here in her open letter to NxStage Amy explains how dialysing

My thank you letter to NxStage Home Haemodialysis

By Amy Armstrong-Nunns
‘I am writing to express my gratitude to NxStage for the recent support I received when planning and undertaking a very
large-scale holiday. Also, for all the support I have received since being able to undergo dialysis at home on NxStage. I

I have been a renal patient since 1989 - from the age of five. In that time I have had multiple chemo’s, lost four kidneys
For more information
on NxStage dialysis hope I will explain in this letter how NxStage really has saved my life.
solutions go to
my right eye and had a stroke paralysing my left side. I am a ‘forty something’ thirty-one-year-old because the’ forty
www.nxstage.com – my native two and one each from my parents - undergone plasma exchange, immuno-absorption, lost the sight in
something’ refers to the number of surgeries I have undergone in the last eight years alone, I have not come off dialysis
since I was 17 and now, including NxStage, I have experienced every kind of dialysis there is.
I have known for a long time that my life will be shortened as a result of my complex medical problems, but I have

I was placed on NxStage because of its more gentle method of dialysis. After my stroke/Bell’s Palsy I was too ill to receive
always placed emphasis on the quality of my life.
dialysis outside the hospital. For that first year I was spending four 10-12 hour days, including travel time to and from
the unit dialysing at the Queen Alexandra dialysis unit in Portsmouth. I was so run down and exhausted, with a face
that wouldn’t move. I couldn’t smile, cry, eat, drink or sleep normally. I was just ‘existing’, with little hope of recovery. I

wanted it to stop. It was all I could do to carry on each day.
It took time but the change to NxStage helped with my stroke recovery and nerve regeneration. When I turned thirty I
couldn’t smile because of the paralysis. This year I turned thirty-one and smiled the whole day long. The stroke hit six
weeks before I was due to fly to America to have my ‘Bucket List’ holiday. I was devastated to have lost out on my dream.
The prospect of me ever being well enough to go – especially as I can’t return to regular haemodialysis – looked to

However in May last year the hospital let me take NxStage home. I was well enough at last. The paralysis to my face has
everyone to be remote.
now recovered enough that you have to look quite closely to see any evidence of it, and for the first time since the age of
again and not just existing. I can’t begin to explain how desperate things were; how miserable, isolated, scared and
Amy and Matthew on their 17 I don’t have to get to a hospital at least three times a week for my treatment. I have the opportunity to start living
holiday of a lifetime empty I felt. The mental knock this all had on me was more severe than the physical impact of all the problems I was
So I have clawed my life back thanks to Home HD. This has been like a holiday from my hospital life. And to cap it all
experiencing, which were consistently horrendous.
this year I was eventually able to do my ‘Bucket List’ holiday that I never thought I would be able to do. My husband, Mat-
thew and I made it to the Grand Canyon alive and well. I had dialysis in the Bellagio and I was the happiest I have been
in many years. I made it to Disney and I finally got to have some serious fun with my husband after the trauma, heartache

NxStage has given me back my life but more importantly has given me back the desire to have that life. I’m not ‘just ex-
and hospital madness of the past few years.
isting’ anymore and I no longer want to ‘give up’. NxStage is what gave me the Grand Canyon - a real holiday. NxStage
also lets me get to feel more comfortable having dialysis and less unwell, as well as making me feel happier and safer.
I can’t thank you all enough for what you have done for me. I hope that many more patients world-wide will get to
know the difference that home HD can make to their life, and the life of those around them. I owe you more than I

could ever repay.
Yours truly
Mrs Amy Alexander-Nunns’

Note from the editor: Amy has had great success with the NxStage dialysis
NxStage machine sits
unobtrusively in the corner machine. Kidney Life recognises that other home haemodialysis machines are, or
are soon to be made available, to patients wishing to dialyse at home using
of her lounge
10 Autumn 2016 www.kidney.org.uk HELPLINE 0845 601 02 09