Dial­y­sis is an ex­treme­ly time-con­sum­ing process.

Each he­modial­y­sis treat­ment usu­al­ly lasts up to four hours and can be re­quired up to three times a week.

No mat­ter how long it takes, though, those suf­fer­ing from kid­ney dis­ease need to put in the time, be­cause it could lit­er­al­ly be a mat­ter of life and death.

Those re­quir­ing dial­y­sis need to struc­ture their lives around their treat­ment.

Aman­da Ra­hael, how­ev­er, wants to change that and give peo­ple a chance to re­claim their lives and fit treat­ment in­to their sched­ule in­stead.

As re­sult, she has opened Re­gents Dial­y­sis; an ex­ec­u­tive dial­y­sis treat­ment ser­vice, with ex­clu­sive and pri­vate treat­ment, and per­son­al nurs­ing.

“So peo­ple can con­duct their meet­ings or get their work done while do­ing dial­y­sis, as each ap­point­ment takes a big chunk of their day.”

She added that Re­gents Dial­y­sis will al­so be of­fer­ing its ser­vices out­side what is usu­al­ly con­sid­ered reg­u­lar work­ing hours.

“If some­one wants to come at 8 pm and do their dial­y­sis un­til mid­night, we will make our­selves avail­able. We are pro­mot­ing an ex­ec­u­tive ex­pe­ri­ence for dial­y­sis.”

She be­came fa­mil­iar with the in­con­ve­nience that comes with dial­y­sis when a fam­i­ly mem­ber had to un­der­go treat­ment re­cent­ly.

“I had a fam­i­ly mem­ber who was un­der­go­ing dial­y­sis for a few years and he was very frus­trat­ed be­cause he would have to go down to the in­sti­tu­tion to be treat­ed and spend hours there with many oth­er pa­tients,” she said.

“The treat­ment room would get noisy with pa­tients chat­ting, so tak­ing a nap was of­ten not pos­si­ble. There were on­ly a few nurs­es to tend to many pa­tients, and it was over­all just a frus­trat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, that was re­peat­ed with each ses­sion,” Ra­hael said.

The fam­i­ly mem­ber even­tu­al­ly tried an­oth­er in­sti­tu­tion but that pre­sent­ed oth­er dif­fi­cul­ties.

“The sec­ond cen­tre had less pa­tients, but was a lot more rigid with their time sched­ules. So then that was an­oth­er set of frus­tra­tions,” she said.

Ra­hael said this led her to come up with the idea of cre­at­ing a “pri­vate ex­ec­u­tive ex­pe­ri­ence.”

“The pa­tient will go to their nephrol­o­gist for the pre­scribed treat­ment plan, then come to us for the treat­ment. We will work close­ly with your nephrol­o­gist for con­tin­u­a­tion of care,” she said.

“For most pa­tients, dial­y­sis be­comes such an in­con­ve­nient part of their life, and the goal here is to make it less frus­trat­ing and more com­fort­able, by of­fer­ing a pri­vate room with a pri­vate nurse, a com­fort­able re­clin­er, ca­ble tele­vi­sion and wi-fi ac­cess,” Ra­hael said.

Dial­y­sis is in such high de­mand in pub­lic hos­pi­tals they have re­sort­ed to most­ly do­ing emer­gency cas­es.

“Pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions are not able to fa­cil­i­tate all the peo­ple who need to do reg­u­lar dial­y­sis, so many pa­tients are not ac­cess­ing dial­y­sis treat­ment as of­ten as pre­scribed.

“Re­gents Dial­y­sis will try to solve some of these prob­lems that are be­ing faced by those re­quir­ing treat­ment.

‘We are ready to rock and roll, what­ev­er day and time they want, this is a con­ve­nient op­tion,’” Ra­hael said.

“Life does not have to re­volve around your ap­point­ments any­more, in­stead fit the ap­point­ments in­to your sched­ule,” she said.

For en­quiries, please con­tact Aman­da Ra­hael at (868) 735-3519 or email re­gents­dial­y­sis@gmail.com

Re­gents Dial­y­sis

• ex­ec­u­tive dial­y­sis ser­vice

• ex­clu­sive and pri­vate treat­ment

• per­son­al nurs­ing

• state-of-the-art equip­ment

• com­fort­able en­vi­ron­ment

• con­ve­nient­ly lo­cat­ed in west Trinidad

What is dial­y­sis?

Dial­y­sis is a treat­ment that does some of the things nor­mal­ly done by healthy kid­neys. It is need­ed when your kid­neys don’t work well enough to keep you healthy.

Dial­y­sis:

• re­moves waste prod­ucts, salt and ex­tra wa­ter to pre­vent them from build­ing up in the body;

• helps keep a safe lev­el of cer­tain chem­i­cals in your blood, such as potas­si­um, sodi­um, bi­car­bon­ate, cal­ci­um and phos­pho­rous;

• helps to con­trol blood pres­sure, and

• helps in red blood cell pro­duc­tion to cor­rect ane­mia.