I am always amazed how ‘comfortable’ I am in a dialysis center.
It no longer confounds me that we are taking a person’s blood out of his or her body and circulating it through plastic tubing and a dialyzer (which is really nothing but a plastic membrane, often in hollow “pipe” configuration or as a sandwich with blood at the center) for hours. In essence, because the patient’s kidneys are failing to do so, we are circulating the patient’s entire blood volume through this circuit 20 complete times to remove the toxins of daily living.