FIRST GLANCE
Harvey Wells is spending this fall traveling in his motorhome with his grandsons to every road game of the Cleveland Browns football team, and he hopes to spend
next summer visiting every major league baseball park in the
country.
But that’s not what’s remarkable about Wells. It’s the fact that he
is roaming the country while undergoing dialysis treatment six
days a week.
He is making a trip that wouldn’t have been possible without
recent advances in the treatment of patients with kidney disease.
And though he still must spend a good part of nearly every day
hooked up to a machine, he is fully experiencing the joy of RVing,
and best of all, he said, is that he’s spending precious time with his
two grandsons.
Wells, 57, was diagnosed with reduced kidney function at
the age of 18, but didn’t experience serious health issues until
many years later. By 1998, he was in need of a kidney transplant, and received a kidney from his wife. Unfortunately, the
transplant failed six years later, forcing him to seek regular dialysis treatment.
Conventional treatment for patients like Wells who have end-stage renal disease is a regimen of visits to a dialysis center to be
hooked up to a machine and a dialyzer that acts as an artificial kidney, removing toxins and water from the patient’s blood. Wells
underwent these sessions for four and a half hours three days a
week, but it wasn’t easy. As Wells put it: “It can be depressing to
suddenly be tethered to a machine for something your body once
did on its own.”
New Machine
The treatments left Wells fatigued, forcing him to give up his
work in the car rental business. And because he had to have regular appointments at a dialysis center, travel became difficult. Then,
he heard about a new portable dialysis machine that would enable
him to perform dialysis at home, using the machine six days a
week for three hours or so.
He acquired the portable machine in 2007, and both he and his
wife received training in its use. Initially, he was apprehensive
about the treatment, which requires jabbing himself with a needle,
but before long he was comfortable with it. In fact, he got so confident that he, his wife, and two grandsons took a two-week trip in
an RV in 2007. Naturally, he had to take along his portable dialysis
machine, which is about the size of a 13-inch television set.
That trip went so well that the next year Wells decided to spend
the whole summer traveling with his grandsons. “It was a great
two months,” he said. They covered 12,500 miles and 37 states in
an RV, visiting places ranging from Times Square to Mount
Rushmore. Along the way, Wells earned payment for some of his
expenses by serving as a spokesperson for the makers of his
portable dialysis machine, NxStage Medical, stopping at dialysis
centers to talk to kidney patients about the home dialysis system.
Wells said treatment with the home machine reduces the
buildup of toxins and fluids, so that he doesn’t experience the kind
of fatigue he felt when he was going to a treatment center. The difference, he explained, is that he does the home treatment six days
a week and went to the treatment center only three times a week.
The more frequent treatment, he said, comes closer to mimicking
normal kidney function since kidneys work all the time.
Wells and his
grandsons, Jared, 12,
and Chase, 11, are
traveling this fall in a
34-foot Four Winds
Magellan motorhome.
Wells said the
motorhome is an ideal
place to take dialysis
treatment because
everything is conveniently close at hand.
Wells became a fan
of the Cleveland
Browns while living in
Ohio in the 1980s, and
so that’s why they are
following the team on
road trips that are taking them to Denver,
Baltimore, Buffalo,
Pittsburgh, Chicago,
Detroit, Cincinnati
and Kansas City. His
wife, Peggy, can’t make
the trip because of her
job with American
Airlines, but she is flying to meet them
when she can. Their home is in Texas, at a town midway between
Dallas and Fort Worth.
Wells’ grandsons, who live in Florida, are being home-schooled for the first time while they travel with him this fall.
Adding to their education is the opportunity to see the country,
and everything from presidential libraries to the Rock ‘n Roll Hall
of Fame.
It’s a trip that wouldn’t have been possible without a portable
dialysis machine. Wells said that he meets a surprising number of
RVers on the road who require kidney treatment and make
appointments at dialysis centers at their destinations. But, he said,
the kind of road trip he is on, constantly traveling and going to
many destinations, wouldn’t work if he didn’t have a portable
machine.
You can read about what Wells calls “Grandpa’s Road Trip
2009: the Football Tour” at the website of NxStage Medical at
www.nxstage.com.
Wells said portable dialysis has given him a new, more positive
outlook on his own health and that the RV trips are showing his
grandsons that no matter what difficulties you face, there are ways
to overcome obstacles. Wells is more than content as he travels the
country in a motorhome with his grandsons. “I’m living the
dream,” he said. ;
A portable dialysis machine enables kidney patient
Harvey Wells to travel the country in a motorhome.
Harvey Wells
Write to Mike Ward, editor at RV Life magazine, 18717 76th
Avenue West, Suite B, Lynnwood, WA 98037 or e-mail
editor@rvlife.com. Find First Glance online at rvlife.com.
