Elderly dialysis patient decides it's easier to die

With the news that Polson's dialysis center will be closing its doors on Sept. 24, patient Jerry Paul of Polson has decided to opt out of dialysis treatments.

That means he is choosing to die.

He's not angry, he says.

He's just plain worn out.

Moving to Missoula or Kalispell is out of the question, and he is tired of commuting to Missoula for treatments, like he did for nine months last year.

"It's too rough, that traveling back and forth," he said at his home last Friday. "It's no good. You're not back till 7 p.m. It was just killing me, so I decided it would be easier to just give it up."

That means he could die any time now.

His opting out of dialysis is not meant to be a big show of protest against the recent St. Patrick Hospital decision to close the Polson center, he said.

"It's just my own choice," he remarked in a low voice.

However, if the St. Pat's Polson center had stayed open, he would have continued his dialysis treatments, he said.

According to dialysis nurses, it is always a patient's choice whether or not to undergo dialysis treatments.

Many folks have told Jerry and his family that, presented with the same situation, they would probably do the exact same thing he's doing.

Currently Jerry is the only one opting out of the treatments, but a second Polson patient said last Friday that he may just decide to in late September, when the local center closes.

On the day of our interview, Jerry felt tired but "pretty fair," he said.

He had already been off dialysis for a week.

He was relaxing in his recliner, his elderly poodle Mickey by his side. He wants Mickey euthanized once he's gone.

Jerry's last treatment was on Wednesday, Aug. 18.

Two days later he mowed his own lawn.

"He's a determined man," said his granddaughter, Tami Degele.

The 84-year-old man has other medical problems, including a pacemaker that keeps his heart beating and macular degeneration that has left him legally blind.

About three years ago, Jerry's kidneys quit working. "We don't know exactly why," he said.

Born in 1920, he moved to Polson when he was nine years old. "It was pretty quiet here then," he recalled. "There were wagon wheels and horses up and down Main Street."

Jerry's adopted father used to run sheep down Main Street when moving them from pasture to pasture. The winter pasture in those days was what is now the old part of Polson's golf course.

He graduated from Polson High School in 1939 and has lived in the same Polson home for 55 years.

He operated Wardrobe Cleaners in downtown Polson from 1946 until selling it in 1980.

All his life, he has enjoyed working with wood.

Jerry's daughter, Sue Holmes, sids that she and the rest of the family are not so much upset with St. Patrick Hospital as they are with U.S. Congress for "butting in" by creating new dialysis regulations that are devastating for rural areas.

"They complicated the whole deal," Holmes said. "They pass regulations but don't look at what it means for rural areas."

She explained that last January the federal legislature passed a bill requiring kidney specialists, called nephrologists, to visit dialysis patients once a week in order for a facility to receive full Medicare reimbursement.

"It's complicated stuff," Holmes commented.

The two nephrologists are in Missoula, she said, and they have to cover all four of St. Patrick Hospital's dialysis centers - Polson, Hamilton, Butte and Missoula.

"No way could those doctors cover all of that," she said. "What does Congress have to do with dialysis? If they're not going to research the repercussions of a bill, they had better not pass it. They should keep their noses out of it."