Welcome To Athens Kidney Center

Make the Most of Your Clinic Visit

Visiting a kidney specialist can be frightening. The mind is in free fall, and conjures up frightening images of death, disability, dialysis, and worse. It is worth remembering that you will be no sicker after the visit than you were on arrival! Those things you might be most afraid of, are likely never going to happen. You do not have to dismiss your fears, but you have to air them in the open, preferably with your doctor. So, take a deep breath, bring a loved one along, and keep an open mind.

To help you at your first (and subsequent visits), we have a few suggestions ready:

Read More »

Our Philosophy

Our quest is to build a center of repute founded on institutional integrity, professional excellence, continued clinical improvement, high ethical responsibility and utmost compassion for those who are sick or otherwise impaired.

We will strive to be the best- bar none- at what we do. We will imbibe the culture of Hippocratic empathy. We will work as a team to guide our patients to a better place.

Read More »

Meet Our Team

Our clinical team consists of your kidney specialist, the facility dietitian, social worker, charge nurse and patient-care technicians. We all work together with your family and loved ones to support and guide you through your illness like kidney diseases, hypertension, dialysis and diabetes care . We recognize that choosing a medical team can be a difficult proposition, therefore we encourage you to discuss your hopes and fears freely with our team before making a decision. We also encourage our patients to talk to loved ones, family aquaintances who also suffer from kidney failure, and where possible, visit other facilities before making a decision. Long term care ought not to be a “hit or miss” affair dictated by the vagaries of dumb luck, insurance restrictions or the Yellow Pages. It is our mission to address your needs with compassion, candor and respect.

Read More »

Letter to My Dialysis Patient

Dear Patient

Welcome to Athens Kidney Center. At this time, you have reached what we call End-Stage Kidney Failure, meaning that both your kidneys are so damaged that they can no longer support life. This happens when the capacity of both kidneys are at about 10 percent of normal; that is, twelve men doing the job of one hundred. As you can imagine, they cannot complete the job satisfactorily and will tire more easily. They cannot do it all, and before long, there will be only five men left. That is precisely the case with what is left of your kidneys.
At this point, you may experience symptoms such as poor appetite, morning nausea, undue tiredness, muscle cramps, shakiness or seizures, swelling of the feet and ankles, “bloodshot” eyes, dry itchy skin, metallic taste in the mouth, uncontrolled blood pressure levels, frequent nose bleeds and constipation. Your skin might also bruise easily and you could develop a peculiar uriniferous odor to the breath. It is common to suffer memory lapses. Usually, as these symptoms are common and develop very slowly, most patients may be initially dismissive of their severity.
The most common reasons for long-standing kidney failure are uncontrolled high blood pressure and diabetes mellitus.

Read More »