Patient lauds local dialysis drive

Metta Visser would rather not make a trip from Emo to Thunder Bay three times a week.
As such, she’s pleased she may not have to much longer if a hemodialysis unit becomes a reality at La Verendrye hospital here.
“It would be really beneficial,” said Visser, who has been getting hemodialysis treatments at Thunder Bay Regional (McKellar site) since August.
Not only does her husband, Richard, have to take time off work every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday but the cost of travelling back and forth to Thunder Bay that often really adds up.
“You get travel grants but that barely covers the cost–especially after the gas prices went way up,” she remarked this morning.
But more importantly, Visser feels a local hemodialysis unit would let patients who need it to get back to leading a more comfortable life.
“I’d been using the peritoneal dialysis at home until then. But in August I got a bug and had to start on the hemodialysis,” she noted.
“So we lived in Thunder Bay for a while–we thought it would be easier that way. But we came back. It drained us. It was too much,” she remarked.
She and her husband moved back to Emo in late January.
Visser said she knows several other patients from Emo and elsewhere in the district who have moved away from friends and family to remain in Thunder Bay for regular dialysis treatments.