My 78-yr old mother, a Type 1 diabetic for 62 years, decided to quit her kidney dialysis after much consideration. After a heart attack, her kidneys finally failed, and she was on dialysis for approx 2 years before she decided to quit. She never felt any better after the dialysis treatments, in fact she felt worse on those days, and she also gained other symptons such as sharp body pains and fainting spells. It has been 13 months now since her last dialysis treatment, her creatinine level remains around 3.3, and she has many of the sypmtoms of end stage renal failure, but she keeps on going! Everything we read on the Internet says most people pass away within weeks/months of discontinuing dialysis, so we don't know what to expect. She doesn't want to continue feeling lousy all the time, and her doctors keep increasing her medications - to help with nausea, tiredness, recent drastic vision loss, etc. Do you know of many cases where someone lives for over a year with minimal kidney function? Her doctors aren't any help explaining what's happening to her, and I live 6 states away!