Three times a week, I spend several hours connected to a machine that does what my kidneys can no longer do on their own. The machine filters my blood — removing waste and excess fluid — and returns it to my body. It’s keeping me alive. It’s also exhausting in a way that’s hard to put into words.
The best analogy I’ve found: imagine running your laptop with the battery at 8%. The device still works. You can open documents, send emails, get things done. But every operation takes longer, the fan runs loud, and you’re always one unexpected task away from a shutdown. That’s dialysis life.
The fatigue isn’t just tiredness. It’s a bone-deep heaviness that comes partly from the treatment itself and partly from anemia — a common complication when kidneys can no longer signal the body to produce enough red blood cells. On dialysis days, I often spend the hours afterward resting. On off days, I try to live normally. But ‘normal’ has a different ceiling now.
Low appetite and nausea are frequent visitors. Some days I eat well; other days food just doesn’t interest me, which makes managing nutrition harder. Fluid restrictions are part of life too — your kidneys normally regulate how much fluid your body holds, so when they can’t, you have to do it manually.
I’m sharing this not for sympathy, but because I think people deserve an honest picture. Living kidney donation is a decision that should be made with real information — and that includes understanding what the alternative looks like for someone like me. A transplant wouldn’t just make me feel better. It would give me my life back.
If you have questions about what living kidney donation actually involves, the right place to go is the official CPMC donor portal at cpmckidneydonor.org. All screening is confidential and handled by their medical team — not by me or this site.