Guylaine Nadeau’s kidneys are barely working and since last January she has had to undergo three 15-hour hemodialysis treatments a week at the Cap-aux-Meules hospital.
The life of the 56-year-old woman depends on this machine.
“We are completely changing our lives. We can’t work anymore. Anything your kidney filters in 48 hours, it does in 4 hours like a normal human,” says Guylaine Nadeau.
“Dialysis keeps patients alive, but it brings with it a lot of fatigue and inconvenience, as well as the constraints of being connected to a hospital,” explains Dr. Isabelle Houde.
She was placed on the kidney transplant waiting list earlier this year.
“My fear is not finding a donor. “I need a donor to live on,” emphasizes the patient.
No one in their immediate environment can be a living donor.
“I have polycystic kidney disease. It’s familial, it’s hereditary. So I appealed to everyone outside of my family to get a kidney because my family can’t donate because there are genes,” she said.
One of his sisters is also expecting a donor.