Health Care Experiences (Option B)
University of Phoenix
Health Care Vocabulary
HCS/212
Coralene Quimby-Worrell
July 21, 2014

Health Care Experiences (Option B)
Health care technology today is far more advanced than it was 30 years ago. With a variety of technology available to medical agencies, patients can now be diagnosed and treated quicker than they could 30 years ago. One piece of technology that I have always wanted to know more about is the dialysis machine. Though I work in a hospital, my job is medical administration so I never have see for my own eyes how this type of technology works.
A couple of years ago my mother went in for a routine checkup. A few days after her checkup, she was notified that both her kidneys were deteriorating and that she had about a year to live, if she did not have a kidney transplant. The entire family was in shock, disbelief, how could this happen to us. We did not sit around long feeling sorry for ourselves. Once the dust cleared my two sisters and I began doing research on what we could do to help our mother. It did not matter that I was in Korea, or my older sister was in Oregon and the other in California. We all pulled together and did our homework and shared what each had found. To make a long story short, my mother did have a transplant; the donor was my younger sister. Today both my mother and sister are leading healthy lives. Though my mother needed dialysis it was something that we all looked into before the transplant.
Dialysis is a treatment that mimics some of the functions that healthy kidneys perform. This process is needed when our own kidneys can no longer take care of the body’s needs. People receive dialysis treatment because 85 to 90 percent of their kidneys have lost function; this is known as end-stage kidney failure. Doctor’s are able to measure the function and stage of a