34 | www. Char l es tonPhys i c i ans . com | www.Hea l thL i nksChar l es ton . com HEALTH SPECIALISTS & ENDOSCOPY CENTER Mt Pleasant | West Ashley | Summerville | Moncks Corner 843-571-0643 | PalmettoDigestive.com Patients Love Palmetto ! • 99% Satisfaction Rating • 4.8 Google Star Rating from Over 450 Combined Patient Reviews NOW OPEN IN CAROLINA PARK State-of-the-Art Digestive Clinic & Endoscopy Center July 26, 2022. It is 4:30 in the morning, and Linda Burns is packing a small bag: eyeglasses, tablet, two changes of clothes, six bottles of various medications, her living will and health care power of attorney. In three hours, her future – uncertain when she went to bed the night before – will have changed as she becomes the 10th kidney transplant patient in the new Prisma Health Transplant Center in Greenville and the fifth to have a living donor. A resident of Greer, Linda has been fighting kidney failure for four years. It has been an up and down battle with incredible successes and disappointing setbacks. Through a restrictive, complex and ever-evolving diet as well as lifestyle changes, she has held dialysis at bay, impressing her nephrologist, who believes she should have been on dialysis two years ago. While she is diminutive in size, she is indomitable in will. Unlike many South Carolinians struggling with kidney disease and kidney failure, Linda has neither hypertension nor diabetes. The exact cause of her kidney damage is unknown, though she believes it was a severe reaction to chemotherapy in 2017 following breast cancer surgery. Kidney disease is on the rise in South Carolina. Its seventhin-the-country ranking should come as no surprise, since the Palmetto State is high on the list of the three biggest contributors to kidney failure: Diabetes is fifth, high blood pressure is seventh and obesity is tenth, according to American’s Health Rankings. The Prisma Health Transplant Center in Greenville is the fourth transplant program that Director and Chief Surgeon Dr. Todd Merchen has helped to develop or start. The Prisma program filled a void of accessible transplant surgery and care in the Upstate, where patients previously had to travel more than 100 miles for a transplant. The center, which opened in late 2021 and performed its first transplant in February of 2022, has already received more than 1,000 referrals. Kidney disease is not curable, but it is preventable. “I would love personally for patients to have more access to care earlier to diagnose hypertension and diabetes in younger people,” said Dr. Merchen. “These conditions are potentially something we can intervene on with earlier and better medical care. Transplant staff love what we do, but we would love to have less of it to do.” As soon as her oncologist identified her kidney disease, Linda tackled it head on. In 2018, she engaged nutritionist Denise Capicchino to design a diet focused wholly on the health of her kidneys. Favorite foods like tomatoes and cheese were replaced with homemade “kidney tea,” pea milk and nondairy This story is part of a series of articles on kidney transplantation, kidney health and disease prevention that continues in the November/December edition.
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