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Patient Presentation 3
Please note, this page is a summary of the full conference speech (click here for the full transcript).
Sue
Lyon
Having kidney failure has some good points and some bad points, Sue Lyon told the conference delegates.
"It's a bit like marriage really, for better or worse", she said.
"I think in the end what I can say is, I wouldn't be the person I am today, without kidney failure".
Sue has an interesting job as a freelance medical journalist, and she owes her job to her experience of kidney disease. When she applied for a job as the editor of a magazine for GPs, she got it, against very strong competition. Afterwards she learnt it was because of her intimate knowledge of medicine and the NHS.
"And I have to say that having kidney failure and having had dialysis and a transplant is still helpful in my job", said Sue.
"I've used it shamelessly to get interviews and to pick up the phone to ring people up".
It certainly helped when she had to interview patients to be able to think, "I know what its like to have a chronic disease".
If she hadn't had kidney failure, she would not have met her partner, also a kidney patient. And she had met some fantastic people, both health professionals and patients, including people from the National Kidney Federation and from Guy's and their families.
Sue has spent more than half of her life with kidney failure. She was first diagnosed in 1977, and for nine years was on home haemodialysis, at the time a treatment of choice, which enabled her to continue with her job.
"I actually thought it was fine, and I very much welcome the NICE report which suggests that patients ought to be given the choice to do this", she said.
In the days before ciclosporin, she had decided against having a transplant, but later, after seeing fellow patients having successful transplants, she went on the waiting list. After only six months she had a transplant in 1986, which was still going strong.
She had hesitated when asked to speak about herself at this conference, knowing the reputation of journalists - "slightly better than an estate agent, but not that much".
And then she thought she would actually be coming to talk to a room full of achievers.
"Because you are still here, despite what the NHS and the doctors and so on have thrown at you over the years, you are still alive to tell the tale".
She also had not wanted to talk about negatives, because she thought there was quite enough of that already.
"People talk about the negatives of renal failure, for very good reasons, but what it does is it sometimes turns kidney patients into passive victims, which clearly, given the stroppiness in this audience, is not true at all".
Please note, this page is a summary of the full conference speech (click here for the full transcript).
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Jacqueline
Campbell - Peritoneal Dialysis - Past, Present and Future
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