Teaching Hope

Four days of the week, Westside middle school PE instructor Virgie Widdowson comes home and watches blood filter out of her body.

She reclines in her brown leather chair and wraps her body in a prayer polka dot blanket. She cleans the catheter in her chest and hooks it up to a dialysis machine. The blood leaves her body, but she feels nothing. After a couple of seconds, her eyelids become heavy, but with the help of her “dialysis buddy” she usually stays awake so she can work or have a conversation.

Thirty minutes later she checks her blood work. This process is repeated every 30 minutes for the next four hours so her blood can be properly cleaned so she can live.

Widdowson suffers from a genetic disease called IgA nephropathy. According to the Mayo Clinic, over time, this disease prevents the kidneys from eliminating waste from a person’s blood. Although she was born with this disease, she didn’t realize she had it until 2006 when doctors discovered she had less than 30 percent function in both of her kidneys.

Check out the rest of this story in Issue 3 of the Lance this Friday.