16 year old Mollie from Darwen has been coming to Alder Hey for dialysis for the past seven years.
Mollie was diagnosed with Chronic Kidney Disease in Belfast when she was six and then transferred to Alder Hey when the family moved to Darwen when she was 9, Mollie had been experiencing sickness and headaches for a couple of years which was originally misdiagnosed as abdominal migraines.
Chronic kidney disease is a long-term condition where the kidneys don’t work as well as they should. There is no cure for CKD but treatment and monitoring can help stop it getting worse. There are 5 stages to the disease- at stages 1-3 the kidneys are still working well, at stages 4-5 the kidneys need extra help to filter out waste. Mollie is now at stage 5 which means she needs dialysis to help remove waste products and excess fluid from the blood. It often involves diverting blood to a machine to be cleaned as the kidney would normally do.
In 2018, Mollie was placed on peritoneal dialysis. Peritoneal dialysis is a treatment for kidney failure that uses the lining of your abdomen, or belly, to filter your blood inside your body. Mollie was able to do this at home overnight which meant she could go to school as normal.
In 2019 Mollie had a kidney transplant but it unfortunately failed a year later.
Due to complications, Mollie had to go on to haemodialysis, where a machine is used to clean your blood. This meant coming to Alder Hey several times a week for hours at a time. This had a big impact on Mollie’s life. Thankfully, Clinical Nurse Specialist for Renal Home Therapies, Leah Wilson, suggested that with proper training, the family could do the dialysis at home.
The family jumped at the chance. The training was intense and took around 6 weeks to complete but then Mollie was able to do dialysis in the comfort of her own home. Leah was there to support them every step of the way and came to their home to ensure they had the confidence to do it on their own.
Mollie said “It’s so much better doing this at home, I don’t have to go to hospital three times a week and I can work it around my life rather than the other way round.”
Mollie’s mum Samantha said “The care has been amazing, the renal team are fabulous and I couldn’t do it without them, they’re like family. They’ve taught us everything we know and given us the ability to make the most of life in between dialysis. Mollie loves swimming and has only been able to go swimming recently as she hasn’t got any medical lines attached to her.”
Leah said “Dialysis can have a huge impact on our children and young people and so being able to make it as comfortable as possible for them is our priority. I really love what I do and hopefully we can get more families home in the future.”