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Area man may hold dialysis record Area man may longest living person continuously on dialysis

Richmond Times-Dispatch - 11/6/2017

A former Virginia prison inmate may be the longest living person continuously on kidney dialysis in the country, if not the world.

Walter Leon Apperson, 63, of Richmond has been on dialysis since March 9, 1982 - although he says it began a month earlier - with most of the treatment behind bars for violent crimes. He now believes he may have been at the demanding medical regimen longer than anyone else.

Officials with the National Kidney Foundation believe there have been people on dialysis for longer periods, but it is not known if they are still alive. And some, unlike Apperson, who has been continuously on dialysis, may have had the treatment interrupted by kidney transplants.

Dr. Anna Vinnikova, the medical director and attending nephrologist at the Fresenius Kidney Care Dialysis Center on Leigh Street, where Apperson is treated, called him "a great patient." And at Apperson's request, she wrote a letter to see if he could be included in the Guinness World Records.

She said, "To my knowledge, and I haven't done extensive research about this, 35 (years) is probably the longest." A caveat is the longest living person on continuous dialysis, she said.

A spokeswoman for Guinness World Records North America Inc. said last week that "the longest time having kidney dialysis (haemodialysis) is 41 years 112 days by Muris Mujicic (Croatia) in Rijeka, Croatia," between May 15, 1974, and September 4, 2015.

However, Mujicic is deceased and it is not known if a transplant ever interrupted treatment.

In any case, Apperson has a more important goal than a world record: He wants to vote.

A Richmond native, Apperson was released from prison on Aug. 24, 2012, and has since written a book focusing on his prison experiences. "I'm a born-again Christian," he said last week.

"I was never no bad person. I was just greedy, and greedy and lazy. Either of them two will put you in the graveyard or in the prison," Apperson said.

His voice breaking, he said, "I regret doing so much stuff I wish I could live it over again. The only reason I'm still here is that God is not through with me yet. He has some plan for me; I don't know what it is."

He hopes his experience will inspire others on dialysis.

His criminal career began as a teen. In 1980, he was serving time for armed robbery at a work camp when he started getting dizzy and collapsed. His kidneys were damaged because of a bladder blockage. He received dialysis treatment once and was then able to cope for a couple of years with just medication.

Finally, in February 1982, his kidneys stopped working, and he began dialysis at Richmond Memorial Hospital. In 1982 and 1983, he was convicted of second-degree murder in Richmond and several robbery and firearms charges in Richmond and Petersburg. In 1985, he stabbed a corrections officer during a riot.

He told The Times-Dispatch in a 2010 interview while still in prison that he thought his kidney failure was the end of his life and believes that he got into serious trouble because he wanted to die.

Apperson said that while first in prison, he would come back from a dialysis session feeling weak. But he pulled himself together and acted strong so as not to be preyed upon by other inmates. Prisons are safer now, he said, and after eight or nine years, he realized he had a life that was worth living.

He was paroled in 2012 and lives with one of his sisters, who also has a disability, in an apartment off Hull Street. "I had been away from my brothers and sisters most of my life because I always been kind of a knucklehead. They wanted me to write a book."

Apperson uses a wheelchair and electric scooter to get around because he has difficulty balancing. He cannot type because his bones are deteriorating, but a cousin set him up with a computer program that translates his speech into text so he could write the book, "Living to Die Dying to Live."

"It took me about two years to write it. That's what I've been doing for two years, mostly. Now I just sit. I can't walk, really. I used to get so discouraged just sitting up in that room," he said of his pre-writing days. "I felt good writing it. I just had to set back and think."

He uses the scooter to get around but has had some close calls. "Fell down the middle of Hull Street one time and I just laid my head down because I couldn't get up. A lot of people ran over to help me, right, because my head was down. They must've thought I hurt myself. I wasn't hurt, though," he said.

"My brothers and sisters, every time I get on Hull Street, they start praying for me," he said, chuckling.

In between scooter rides and other adventures, he spends roughly four hours every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on a dialysis machine.

"I be so tired and drained after dialysis most of the time I can't do nothing but, after I go get something to eat, I lay down for the rest of that day. The next day I got a little energy, I feel like doing something," Apperson said. But the day after that, he goes through it all over again.

"I'm so glad when the weekend gets here," he said.

Vinnikova, also an associate professor of internal medicine in the division of nephrology at VCU Medical Center, explained, "Dialysis is like a washer and dryer, those are the two things that the kidneys do: They clean the blood - that's the washer - and then they dry the blood, remove extra fluid - that's the dryer."

Dialysis uses a machine to clean the blood and remove waste products the body generates. It also removes extra fluid that patients may not be able to remove.

"The point about dialysis is that it's intermittent therapy. The kidneys work continuously 24 hours a day, seven days a week." Dialysis is not full time so it must be more intensive over those four hours three times a week meeting the patients' minimum needs.

"Many patients have a really hard time sitting through four hours," Vinnikova said. In addition, she said they could have complications or such side effects as cramps, nausea and low blood pressure.

Patients who follow dietary recommendations have an easier time. Vinnikova said Apperson "comes for all his treatments - never misses, he never cuts his treatments short."

He also knows he has fluid and salt restrictions in his diet and if he overdoes it, he understands that the treatment is going to be difficult and that he might have cramps. "He fully understands the cause and effect," Vinnikova said.

"This has been most of his life, so he is very, very experienced. He knows how to live on dialysis and the only way that we do well on dialysis is to not miss the treatments and to follow very, very meticulously all the dialysis restrictions that we recommend to the patients," she said.

Apperson said he used to play chess in prison. "The few games I played out here? I beat people so fast I don't know where I could go to get a good chess game. I probably got rusty now, I haven't played in so long.

"Mainly I look at TV now. That's about it. I go to Bible study, I enjoy that, every week. My cousin come and get me, carry me there." He said he regrets imposing on family members who need to drive him when he needs to travel farther than his scooter will take him.

"In this position, somebody's always got to come get you," he said, adding that he greatly appreciates the assistance.

While he would like to make the Guinness Book of World Records, he has a much more important goal, one that a sister-in-law is helping him pursue.

"One thing I want to do, I want to vote before I die," he said. "That's the one thing I want to do, vote before I die."

fgreen@timesdispatch.com(804) 649-6340

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