Kids and Teens on Dialysis Can Now Get a Kidney Transplant

Since I have been working at children's hospital in Los Angeles, I have become very interested in learning about organ transplants. I substitute teach at the hospital so I have become acquainted with the process that has been used for kidney transplants. I have learned quite a bit. Most of my experiences with organ transplants have been with children who are undergoing dialysis due to a poor functioning kidney. Most of the children who are in this department are teenagers. I do not feel depressed, as one would think, because there is a bright future for them. Also, most of these kids I come in contact with, are happy, well-adjusted and seem to have a good home life. These children attend public schools twice a week. Three times a week they are at the hospital for their treatment. They are on a machine for approximately two hours. It is during this time that a teacher comes in and does school work with them. It could be an assignment that their regular teacher has given them from their school or something that hospital teachers are trained to do. This means that they can do Math, English, History, or Science according to their grade level or their ability. My job is to take over the hospital teacher's job when he or she is absent. I work with other kids at this hospital and other hospitals also, but I became particularly interested in kids who are undergoing dialysis.

The main purpose of dialysis is to purify the blood since the kidney that does not function too well cannot do the work. These kids sit in a chair in a semi-reclining position next to a machine that takes the toxic blood away so that it can be purified. The purified blood which replaces the impure blood is then put back into the patient's body. There is a tube that is connected to the patient's body. You can see the impure blood that is drawn away from the kidney into another tube to be purified. The healthy blood is then brought back from another tube to be placed back into the kidney. Since I am not a doctor or a nurse, I am simplifying this method.