Dan Brown/Independent

Harvey Wells is traveling around the country demonstrating the portable hemodialysis unit.

Dan Brown/Independent

The hemodialysis unit is about the size of a small portable television set.

Harvey Wells is a man taking to the road. A modern day Charles Kuralt, Wells is a man on a mission with a message.

“I’m here to spread the word and raise public awareness by traveling cross-country telling kidney dialysis patients that hope is not lost,” he said. “You can be on dialysis and still live a complete and fulfilling life.”

Wells, 57, suffers from end-stage renal disease, which means he has to have a machine clean his blood and do the work his kidneys can’t.

Until now hemodialysis was the most common form of dialysis treatment – requiring a dialysis center visit three times a week for treatments lasting four to five hours a day.

The process often left Wells feeling too tired to much other than sleep and drive to centers for his next treatment.

“To get the treatment in so I’m not spending all day sitting in a center, I’d have to get up at 4:30 in the morning to get to the center and prepped for dialysis,” Wells said. “The process leaves you feeling physically exhausted …

“I’d come home and sleep for a couple hours and then feel so sluggish and wiped out that I wasn’t any good to anyone.

“It was a prison sentence.”

Wells feels he’s granted a new lease on life. He is a man who feels he has been set free: “I tell people it’s like prison and I escaped. Dialysis is no longer a life prison sentence.”

Wells’ Get Out of Jail Free card is a portable hemodialysis machine called the NxStage System One. The size of a small portable TV, the NxStage System One gives Wells his freedom.

The machine doesn’t require special water hook ups and is powered by a standard electrical outlet, so Wells can dialyze in his hotel, at a relative’s house or even in a Winnebago driving around the country with his grandson.

“My goal is to get dialysis patients to consider home therapy over going to a treatment center,” Wells said.

Wells, his grandson Austin, and his Winnebago spent two days last week in the parking lot of Renal Advantage Inc. in Moncks Corner demonstrating the convenience the NxStage System One offers dialysis patients right from his Winnebago.

“We’ll drive more than 12,000 miles visiting 22 treatment centers in 51 days,” Wells said. “It’s important that people suffering from kidney disease know they have hope for a life spent in the comfort of their own homes and not all day in a treatment center.”

Of the 375,000 patients on dialysis, more than 90 percent are tethered to a treatment center, Wells said. He added that the mortality rate of patients utilizing in-center treatment is more than 12 percent after 10 years.

“Using the NxStage System One the mortality rate is only five percent over the same period,” he said.

Besides the portability of the dialysis treatment the NxStage makes those marathon dialysis sessions a thing of the past.

“If you miss a treatment, the damage done to your body is irreversible,” Wells said. “Once the damage is done it’s done.”

Wells added that most people who die while on dialysis usually die from something else.

Using the NxStage System One, treatment is spread over six days and two-to-three hours a day at the most.

“You can do this when you’re sitting down watching TV, in the mornings, whatever time of day it best suits your schedule, and you get to do it in the privacy of your own home,” he said.

According to Wells, kidney disease treatment is one of the few supported financially by the U.S. government.

“There is no cost to the patient to have this machine,” he said. “Your doctor will write you a prescription for the machine. This is the only government-funded disease (treatment) we have.

“Your supplies are paid for. Taking advantage of this system helps both patient and the treatment centers.”

According to Kelly Scott, a home hemodialysis trainer with Renal Advantage, the center can handle 24 dialysis patients per shift, with two daily shifts.

“We currently have 14 dialysis patients,” Scott said. “We have one from Moncks Corner, two from St. Stephen and 11 from Charleston. They either make the commute here or to our office in West Ashley. It’s quite a commute.”

Wells said in the time it takes to drive from St. Stephen to Moncks Corner a patient could be set up and into treatment.

“It takes around 15 minutes to set up,” he said.

“The NxStage has given Harvey Wells a new lease on life,” Scott said.

And Harvey Wells is spreading the word. “(My grandson and I) are going to take off and see the country,” he said.

For more information about hemodialysis, the NxStage System One and the options available, visit www.renaladvantage.com and www.nxstage.com.

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