Getting ready for bed each night for Marc Beaudry includes connecting himself to a dialysis machine.

Using an osmosis-like process, dialysis fluid draws toxins through the peritoneal membrane in his abdomen, thereby removing the toxins from his body.

“I spend a lot of time hooked up to this machine,” Beaudry said in a recent interview.

Without that complicated overnight process, he would die.

But, even with nightly dialysis, Beaudry knows the numbers aren’t in his favor.

Beaudry, of Powell, began dialysis two years ago due to kidney failure caused by prostate uropathy. 

Statistics from the U.S. Renal Data System show the one-year survival rate for patients on dialysis is about 78 percent; the five-year survival rate drops to less than half of that, at 34.7 percent. After 10 years on dialysis, only 11 out of 100 patients still survive.

Those statistics become even more grim when paired with the added knowledge that it takes an average of three to five years for people on the national transplant list to get the kidneys they’re waiting for, depending on their blood type. Some wait much longer.

But if a living donor is willing to donate a kidney, the wait is much shorter — about three months, instead of years, Beaudry said.

For a while, it looked like a donor would be available for Beaudry, but the circumstances in the potential donor’s life changed, and the kidney donation never happened.

So, he’s still waiting. And hoping. And connecting himself to a machine every night.

Dialysis is complicated

Though it’s a huge advantage to be able to do dialysis at home, it is anything but simple. It took 10 days of in-hospital training for Beaudry to learn how to do it by himself.

Each night, he lays out two large, fluid-filled bags on his dresser, one on top of the dialysis machine’s heater, the other on the dresser surface.

One tube connects the first bag of fluid to the top port surgically implanted in his abdomen. Another tube connects the second tube of fluid to the first, and a third tube, used to drain the fluid from his body, connects to the lower port in his abdomen.

Overnight, the machine will fill his peritoneal cavity with fluid, let it remain there for two hours to draw toxins from his body, then drain and replace the fluid three more times, with each “dwell” lasting two hours. Adding the time it takes to heat, then pump and drain the fluid, the process takes a total of 10.5 hours.

Beaudry uses a sterile technique to connect the dialysis tubing. He has to wear a mask, and no one is allowed in the room with him until he’s finished.

When he’s hooked up to the machine, the tubes reach far enough so he can walk to the bathroom or to the couch in the living room.

Before connecting the tubes, Beaudry has to weigh himself, take his temperature and blood pressure, and check his blood sugar, then record those measurements in a flow chart. He weighs himself again and retakes his blood pressure in the morning after dialysis is completed.

Taking weight, blood pressure and temperature measurements helps detect potential problems early, he said.

“If your temperatures spike, it indicates an infection ... and infections are the No. 1 killer” of people on dialysis, Beaudry said. 

Too much fluid in his body would cause his blood pressure to spike, and that can lead to a heart attack.

Beaudry also records the amount of fluid the machine removes from his body, in excess of the amount it put in. The night before, that was 1,427 cubic centimeters, or 1.5 quarts.

Beaudry is required to send his flow chart sheets to the dialysis center once a week.

“If you don’t send in your sheets, they cut you off of your fluid ... and if they cut off your fluid, you’re dead,” he said.

In other words: Do it, or die.

If his weight goes up a pound or two from the day before, he uses dialysis fluid with a higher amount of dextrose — 4.25 percent instead of the usual 2.5 percent — to help drain more fluid from his body. But there’s a risk to that, too.

“It’s not good for you,” he said. “It burns out your peritoneum faster, and it adds even more calories to your system.”

The regular fluid adds 500 calories to his body, making it harder to maintain his weight, he said.

“I tell people I eat two Hershey bars every night,” he said.

If Beaudry’s temperature showed a fever spike, “I have an infection kit, and an antibiotic that goes into my peritoneum. I call the center and tell them I think I have an infection, and they say, ‘OK, go ahead and give yourself an antibiotic.’ (Then) I have to take them a sample of the fluid that comes out of me for testing. I have pre-orders for lab work to get that done.”

Beaudry said dialysis patients on average get one infection per year. He’s thankful that, so far, he hasn’t had any.

New kidney would improve life

But Beaudry would be much more thankful to have a new kidney that would eliminate the need for dialysis, the risk of infection that comes with it, and the constant shaking of his hands caused by kidney failure. For someone who uses a keyboard for a living, that is a frustrating problem.

In the past, a live donor had to be a medical match to donate a kidney to a specific patient. Now, there is a new program that allows potential donors and patients to pair up with other donors and patients to match donors to recipients. (See related story below.)

A new kidney would allow Beaudry to travel again and to enjoy the nature he loves.

“He and his wife, Sherry, used to love to go to Yellowstone and hike; now he can’t do that,” said Beaudry’s friend, Josh Baxter. “Now he has to have dialysis from 8 at night until 6 or 7 the next morning. It is portable, but it would be (difficult) to try and take in a vehicle. Traveling has been hard.”

A new kidney also would give Beaudry more time to spend interacting with Sherry, their children and grandchildren, without worry of a grandchild tripping over or pulling on a tube.

Baxter knew Beaudry first as his classmate’s father, later as a business associate, and now as a close friend.

“A lot of times when people first meet Marc, he comes off a bit ... standoffish, but that’s just the way he comes off. He’s the most giving, genuine, caring person,” Baxter said. “He’s helped me with home improvement projects. He’s an unbelievable craftsman with woodworking. ... He’s the type of person you could call and ask for anything. He’s a great guy.”

Baxter said a kidney transplant would drastically improve Beaudry’s quality of life.

“I really think there’s somebody out there who would donate a kidney,” he said.

As of January, 100,791 of the 121,678 people on the national transplant list were waiting for donor kidneys.

Tragically, an average of 13 people die every day before receiving the kidney transplants they need. In 2014, 4,761 people died while waiting for kidney transplants, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

However, when people are willing to become living kidney donors, lifesaving transplants can happen within 90 days, said Marc Beaudry of Powell. Beaudry has been on dialysis for two years while waiting for a new kidney.

Beaudry said potential donors in the past had to be matched specifically to patients in need of kidney transplants. If a potential donor was medically incompatible with the intended recipient, no kidney donation was possible, and the patient continued to wait.

But now a new donor method called a paired kidney exchange can occur when a living kidney donor is incompatible with the intended recipient. That donor and recipient pair can exchange with another donor/recipient pair, Beaudry said.

The paired kidney exchange enables two recipients with incompatible donors to receive compatible kidneys by swapping donors. In other words, donor 1 would give a kidney to recipient 2, and donor 2 would give a kidney to recipient 1.

In more complex cases, additional donor/recipient pairs may be used to form chains of pairs. Successful paired kidney exchange chains have consisted of as many as 16 donor/recipient pairs, Beaudry said.

For more information about kidney donation, go to www.kidney.org/transplantation/livingdonors.