Shelnelsy, 5yrs, receives dialysis for renal failure
It’s a story with a positive twist. A five year old girl has been battling renal failure. Bad and unusual at her age, but the condition has worsened with a number of complications including hypertension and cholesterol. This is not putting her down…she goes to school, takes treatment four times a day and lives as much as possible a normal life. News Five’s Duane Moody met her today as she received dialysis treatment at the hands of her mother.
Duane Moody, Reporting
From the age of two, Shelnelsy Swift, now five year old, has been in and out of the hospital in a fight for her life. Shelnelsy has been taking dialysis treatment four times daily, and when we checked on her today she is the healthiest she’s ever been.
Michelle Godoy, Mother
“Right now she has kidney failure and that’s why she is doing the peritoneal dialysis. She do it four times a day—morning, afternoon, evening and night. Dah like wah exchange weh yoh it and when yoh do it yoh have to be clean, yoh have to sterilize everything and like dat. And whatever she put in you have to take out as well. So if I put in eight hundred mls, I need fi tek out eight hundred mls or more. The minute she tek out less, dah because di body di retain it. When she retain it she get swell up because she don’t use the bathroom like normal.”
Duane Moody
“Is it a painful process for her for you?”
Michelle Godoy
“Fi me, sometimes I get frustrated sometimes, but I have to do whatever I could fi she. I feel much better because she—ih di do plenty better now of course, definitely.”
Duane Moody
“I understand it’s been two months since she’s been in hospital.”
Michelle Godoy
“We dah well known people dah hospital.”
Duane Moody
“Is it painful for her?”
Michelle Godoy
“Yeah, because she can’t do what five year old do. She noh ramp because di minute she ramp, she have dat thing inside ah she and maybe ih might di play rough and things like that.”
Dr. Cecilio Eck, Pediatrician
“She has been at death’s door at least three or four times, where the blood pressure went very, very high on a couple occasions we had to ventilate her, put her on the breathing machine and she went through all of this and is well. In between those episode she was followed-up at our clinic and she use to go to school in the meantime.”
According to Doctor Cecilio Eck, it started out as nephrotic syndrome: a mild case of kidney complication that has now worsened.
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“Nephrotic syndrome is an illness that affects the kidneys, in which the kidneys can’t keep in the protein in the body. And so you literally pee out all the protein in your body and you start to become very swollen. With this there is an increase risk of infection and we give medications to limit the amount of protein that the kidneys loose.”
But there are other compounding illnesses that Shelnelsy has acquired including hypertension and cholesterol.
Michelle Godoy
“She hypertensive, ih have high blood pressure. She have cholesterol problems so she got a lot of stuff that you have to watch because too much pressuring, instance she ker up her blood pressure.”
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“With the medication and with the protein loss, there is an increased risk again of high blood pressure. So Shelnelsy, two years ago started with it, we gave the appropriate medication but the disease still progressed.”
The peritoneal dialysis is costly, but there is hope that when Shelnelsy is of age, a kidney transplant would be the next step and that comes at an excessive cost.
Dr. Cecilio Eck
“The peritoneal dialysis, to get the fluid, to put it in is very expensive. Speaking with the mom when I met her a couple weeks ago at the clinic, she had quoted about twelve hundred a month and that just includes getting the fluid and then that will continue until transplant. The problem with transplant is finding an appropriate donor and then after that is done, then the quotes that I have had for transplant patients if you go in Central America, would be about fifty thousand dollars, and if you go abroad it’s about twice that. And after that, the anti-rejection medication cost about two to three thousand dollars a month.”
But for the time being, Shelnelsy is enjoying her childhood attending St. Luke’s Methodist Primary School.
Carol Martin, Teacher, St. Luke’s Methodist Primary School
“Shelnelsy is like any other child in this school. She comes in the morning and she settles in the classroom very well. The usual thing that we will do is at break time we would check on her to see what she would buy from the cafeteria. When it is time for break, we don’t send her out to play too often with the other children. We will ask another child to watch her to see where she is going. She functions normally, she gets up in her classroom, she takes book from the library and she goes back to replace them on the library. She functions very normally, she does her work at the same pace as other children in the class.”
The current treatment for Shelnelsy is at a cost of approximately one thousand five hundred dollars monthly. And while she has received some help from Belize Healthcare Partners and the Ministry of Health, she still needs your help. If you wish to assist contact Michelle Godoy at 660-5906 or the Kidney Association. Duane Moody, reporting for News Five.
Shelnelsy is the youngest known child with renal failure in the country and the illness can be caused by various factors, but the most common cause is unknown.
