Wave: March / April 2010 - Winnipeg in motion

When Armstrong moved over to Seven
Oaks, Jeff quickly followed.
Interestingly, Jeff looks forward to these
visits, his quick wit and people skills on full
display. The staff reciprocates with equally
warm quips and comments.
“Hey, Jeff! Any new projects you can tell
us about?” calls out one staffer. “Still making
movies?”
The feeling of relaxed bonhomie extends
into the examination room where all
conversations concentrate on a printout of
Skinner’s blood work and blood pressure
numbers.
Dialysis doesn’t take away the problems
of chronic kidney disease, it holds them at
bay. Monitoring a patient with kidney disease
is a meticulous process. Each element
in the body – creatinine, sodium, calcium,
potassium, phosphate, cholesterol, hemoglobin,
urea reduction ratio – is carefully
calculated to measure how the kidneys are
working and if dialysis is flushing enough
toxins from the system. The work is carried
out by a team of specialists: One after
another, first a nurse, then a dietitian, then
a pharmacist, then the doctor, they go over
every detail of Skinner’s monthly tests.
To keep his body in balance, Jeff takes
daily medications and vitamins; he’s also
supposed to adhere to a phosphate-free
diet as well as limit his fluid intake to one
litre a day. He attempts to follow the food
and fluid regimen, but it’s tough.
Despite his calm exterior, he’s always
concerned about what the blood work
shows: “Sometimes I feel as though I got
sick because I failed. If my blood work
numbers are off, I have failed.”
He’s hesitant to share these feelings with
the medical team. And he remembers his
feeling of complete elation a couple of
months ago when Armstrong told him,
“You know what? You’re still the healthiest
person in my practice.”
Today, after all observations have been
carefully notated in a five-inch-thick dark
green binder, labelled “Jeff Skinner” – Armstrong
enters the room to review the whole
picture. The discussion is serious: Jeff has
already increased his dialysis up to fourteen
hours a day and still his body is a mass of
symptoms. He complains, especially about
the numbness in his hands, the sensitivity
of nerve endings throughout his body,
which feels like a million needles, his restless
leg syndrome at night, flaky skin, sores
that don’t heal, and burst blood vessels
that turn his eyes into a vision of hot pink
and red. He’s still fatigued, has shortness of
breath and has developed a cough.
It’s obvious that peritoneal dialysis isn’t
going to be a long-term solution. Armstrong
looks at the creatinine levels and confirms
what Jeff already knows: He is on the brink
of needing to undergo hemodialysis, which
some patients require when their residual
kidney function drops to almost nothing.
Fortunately, Jeff is also on the brink of
something else: receiving a kidney from a
live donor. It’s just a matter of arranging a
date for the transplant operation.
Armstrong, with true emotion, says, “I’m
glad you’re getting a transplant.” And as
he leaves the room, he tells Jeff that he is
going to call the Health Sciences Centre “to
see if we can push things along.”
Time for a transplant
Jeff Skinner is doubly blessed. Not only
is he eligible for a kidney transplant, he’s
actually had offers from five live donors
over the last 18 months. The first to step up
was his brother, David, followed by good
friend, local artist and Renaissance man,
Nicholas Burns. Initially, Burns appeared to
be a better match for Jeff, so he became the
first candidate.
Previously, Burns had learned of a
woman in Vancouver who had recovered
22 WAVE