Mark T.

Mark found out something was wrong at 2:54pm of an ordinary Tuesday.

He went to urgent care on his work lunch break for what he thought was a stubborn sinus infection. The doctor ordered basic blood work before sending him home with antibiotics. A few hours later, Mark’s phone rang while he was sitting back at his desk.

The doctor told him he needed to go to the emergency room. Immediately.

His kidney function was around 9 percent, meaning, his kidneys were barely functioning.

Mark had never even heard the phrase “eGFR” before that day. Within twenty-four hours he was in a hospital bed with a catheter in his chest and a dialysis machine circulating his blood beside him. The first treatment lasted four hours. He remembers staring at the tubing, watching his blood move through the lines, trying to understand how his life had changed so quickly, it not really registering as reality.

The cause turned out to be IgA nephropathy, a kidney disease that can silently destroy your kidneys for years before anyone notices. Especially if you don’t see your primary care physician regularly, which Mark did not.

Dialysis quickly became routine. Three days a week. Early mornings. The same chair. The same television playing game shows and nineties sitcom reruns no one was really watching.

Over time, Mark noticed something.

New patients always had the same look on their faces the first few weeks. Confused. Overwhelmed. Wide-eyed. Scared.

And they always had the same questions.

What’s the difference between fistulas and catheters?
Why do you get so cold during dialysis?
Why do I feel dizzy when I stand up after my treatment?
What do you mean pudding is a liquid?!

Mark also saw how after a nurse answered them and moved on to the next patient, they sat in silence, unable to move because they were attached to a dialysis machine.

At first Mark would would just crack a joke across the dialysis floor, “Salad is also considered high in fluid, so that’s an easy excuse to live on popcorn - unsalted of course.”

His jokes weren’t always met with laughter, often weren’t, but over time he began building relationships with his fellow dialysis chairmates.

He wasn’t a doctor or a nurse. Just someone who had learned the system the hard way (as a lover of chocolate pudding), kept notes along the way, and remembered feeling the same shock and sadness when it came to learning to survive kidney failure.

After nine years on dialysis and six years living with a working transplanted kidney, Mark now helps people who are newly facing dialysis, their treatment options, and if someone is eligible for transplant, helping them through the evaluation process.

Mark’s mission is to help people understand their new reality, how to continue living their lives with the limitations of kidney failure, and always has a joke to share, whether someone is ready to laugh or not, which inevitably, with Mark, they always do.