Taranaki Base Hospital adapts kidney dialysis machine to treat farmer's condition

An Ōpunake farmer says a new service at Taranaki Base Hospital has changed his life.

Mark Walsh has had kidney function issues most of his life and travelled out of the region for specialist dialysis treatment sometimes twice a week - but not any more.

The father of two, who also runs an adventure tourism business, first became aware he had kidney disease as a 13 year-old.

At 16 he had his first transplant, but the new organ lasted only about a year and a half.

Now in his mid-30s he has since had a second.

"Two years ago in 2022 that's when I had my second transplant from my dad, but it hasn't quite gone as well as they'd hoped. They had hoped the disease would go into remission, so it's not in remission but it's not attacking the kidney as hard as it did the first time," he said.

Walsh had an auto-immune disease which complicated his condition.

Up until now that had meant travelling for treatment.

"I was driving from Ōpunake up to New Plymouth here then [catching a flight] from New Plymouth up to Auckland, catching a taxi up to the hospital there and then doing my plasma apheresis there.

"It's usually three-and-a-half hours and then I'd have to wait around for usually the 4.30pm flight back to New Plymouth and drive home again, so I wasn't getting home until 7-7.30pm."

If there was no machine available at Auckland, he would have an even more arduous trip to Hamilton.

"So, I'd drive up there at 3.30 or 4 o'clock in the morning and then get on the machine there at about 8.30 in the morning and then do that for three or four hours and then you sort of have a break and go and get something to eat afterwards.

"I'd usually drive home for about an hour or so and stop off and have a break and sometimes have a little sleep for an hour and then carry on home again."

But now Taranaki Base Hospital has adapted an acute kidney dialysis machine so it can be used to treat Walsh's condition by performing the plasma apheresis he requires to prolong the life of his new kidney.

Staff had to be trained to use the machine for this specific function.

Nurse Amanda Murdoch explained the process.

"Mark's blood is coming up through the pump here and up through the circuit and the circuit here is a filter and what it does is it filters off his plasma and it goes through and we mix his blood back through with albumin and return it into a second port in his chest.

"So, we're taking off the plasma which has got the bad proteins in it that are affecting his kidney and we are replacing them with some fresh juicy albumin protein."

Albumin was a protein in blood plasma which was made in the liver. It kept fluid from leaking out of the bloodstream and helped vitamins, enzymes, hormones and other substances circulate through the body.

Treating Walsh was a two-person job and Lucy McElroy was the second pair of hands.

"So, right now I am changing the bottle of albumin, so we have to change the bottle about every 15 minutes because they only come in 500ml bottles and Mark goes through about 4.5 litres of these.

"So, I'm basically perched by the machine keeping and eye on it while Amanda keeps an eye on Mark."

Walsh said the new service had transformed his life.

"Just with the fact of not having to travel so much. Getting done here travelling home I can get groceries afterwards and spend a lot more time with the family and kids, maybe get some fishing in stuff like that.

"It's just given me choices and time to myself and there's less stress on the body and the mind."

With each session taking more than three hours a close bond had developed between staff and Walsh, Murdoch said.

"We have a good time in here there's a lot of laughs going on. We do get to know him pretty well and his family. There's lots of chat about fishing and what we are going to do for dinner tonight.

"Mark likes to cook but I don't so much. We have exchanged a couple of recipes but I just pass them on to my husband."

ICU clinical nurse manager Ian Perry, one of the staff behind the new service, heard evidence of the banter on a regular basis.

"It's actually every Wednesday because my office is through the wall and you hear the laughter and the joy while we are giving an excellent service to Mark."

There was a serious side establishing the new service, Perry said.

"We did this because we saw his plight of having to sometimes fly to Auckland twice a week and then with the flights if he couldn't fly then he missed out on the treatment.

"And we know the health service is a lot about equality and equitably and we thought it only fair if we had the capacity and we had the machinery that with the right training and equipment we could provide the service locally."

The new service would be available to other patients as and when they presented themselves, Taranaki Base Hospital said.

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