Wednesday, July 21, 2010

What Am I Complaining About?

A really easy day today - a quick 25km at either end of the work day - so not much to tell about the ride. 

This mornings ride stats

Instead I thought I'd tell you about the other day when  I visited the Renal Unit at the Mater Dei Hospital with some fellow riders so we could learn a little more about why we’re all taking on the LifeCycle Challenge.

So you think you’ve had a tough day? How often do you find yourself complaining that things are tough or haven’t quite gone your way? Well, I tell you what, sometimes we don’t know we’re born.


So what exactly is renal failure and what does the renal unit do? Renal failure or kidney failure is where the kidneys fail to function adequately. There are two forms: acute kidney injury and chronic kidney disease; either form may be due to a large number of other medical problems. When the kidneys malfunction, problems frequently encountered are abnormal fluid levels in the body, abnormal levels of potassium, calcium, phosphate, blood in the urine and anemia. Long-term kidney problems have significant repercussions on other diseases, such as cardiovascular disease.

It’s really hard to detect and you may have 50% renal failure and not even know it! Once you have been diagnosed the treatment is regular dialysis either at home or at the hospital. Unless you are lucky enough to find a match donor and receive a transplant you will be doing this for the rest of your life.

Treatment in the hospital involves 3-4 visits a week, each for between 3-4 hours while the machines there do the work your body can no longer do for itself. Can you imagine knowing that every other day you have to carve out a morning or an afternoon to go and lie in a bed for 3 hours to be connected to a machine that effectively “washes” your blood for you?

If you are lucky, you can do this treatment at home, usually with a manual process where you perform the dialysis 3 times during the day. Even at home this must be a huge restriction on your daily routine and on your family and work life. Arguably your best hope is an overnight treatment with a portable machine that works while you sleep over an 8-hour period.

I think it’s fair to say that none of these are great options, but they are the only ones available until a donor is found. It was truly humbling to meet the staff and the patients at the unit yesterday. Seeing how the patients deal with this harsh and unfair role of the dice with such good grace and humour, with no trace of bitterness is amazing and certainly puts our day to day problems firmly into perspective. No doubt I’ll be complaining about little inconveniences again within a few days, but for now, I stand well and truly corrected as to how bad my problems really are. It’s so easy to take for granted being able to do what you want, when you want to. Can you imagine being a 15 year old kid and not being able to take full advantage of that; to be so restricted?

There are currently around 220 patients at the renal unit, half of whom are treated on the ward, and half through home treatment. There are only 40 portable overnight units available so around 70 of the home based patients will treat themselves manually during the day. The other 110 will regularly visit the hospital. Less than 10% of these patients can hope to receive a donor in the next 12 months due to a lack of signed up donors in Malta.

The dialysis machines cost around €30,000 each and treatment for a year will also cost between €25,000-€30,000 every year – that’s around €150-€200 per treatment per patient. It’s also a huge amount of money to be found every year.

LifeCycle is aiming to raise €200,000 this year to pay for new machines, treatment, and things to make whiling away the hours on the ward less boring (like TV’s for example) and also to fund ways to make it more convenient for the patients to get to the hospital. Raising cash is one way we can help. Raising awareness to find 1,000 new donors is another important objective.

Personally I’m aiming to contribute €2,700 towards this total, as is every other member of the team. I know that you’re probably bored of receiving sponsorship requests from your friends and families all the time, particularly around London or New York Marathon time, and I can totally appreciate that.

But this is cause is just as worthy as the more notable charities and really struggles to raise funds on a very small island with limited resources. Not only that, this isn’t just another assisted parachute jump or even a marathon, this is a ridiculously tough challenge. An average of 10 hours cycling every day for 11 consecutive days through the Alps!

I really hope that for both of these reasons you’ll take the time to help me reach my target of €2,700 knowing that it’s for a really worthwhile cause. It’s less than a month until we leave for Italy to start the challenge and I need to have hit my target by the end of July, so the clock is ticking really fast and loud now! Any and all support and donations are hugely appreciated.

You can find my online donations page here. Just click to take you straight to it. As an added incentive, all donations over €50 will be placed in a draw for an expenses paid trip for two to watch Man Utd play at Old Trafford next season! If you win, I’ll buy them off you and you get your money back :)

A big Thanks to all of those who have donated already - and don't worry you don't have to make another one! 

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