Dougie the Dialysis Machine takes on Ramathon

Chris Swan is a part pf the home therapies team at Royal Derby Hospital. They work within the dialysis unit providing haemodialysis at home. Dialysis is a therapy that treats kidney disease and they provide dialysis for over 350 patients per week.

As a team, Chris' team are keen runners that have entered many of the derby running events over the years. This year they were coming up with ideas of raising funds for our dialysis caravan. They have a dialysis caravan in Wales which gives patients a much-needed holiday away and they can perform dialysis that they need with staff they know and feel comfortable with.

The idea of running around the wonderful city of Derby with a dialysis machine seemed a little bit crazy, but Dougie has already run his first race and now has a TikTok following @dougiethedialysismachine.

Dougie is one of the team's machines that was at the end of its lifespan, but their engineers set to work on him to enable him to begin his running career. A dialysis machine weighs around 140 kilos and this was reduced to 70 kilos and new wheels were attached and a bar to push him with.

The aim of Dougie is to raise awareness of kidney disease, and to raise funds for their new purpose built dialysis caravan in Wales. Their first challenge was the Derby 10K, six of them ran whilst pushing Dougie and finished in a time of 1hr 1 minute.

Dougie has recently run a fun run around the caravan site in Wales which was enjoyed by all. He has now entered Ramathon and wants to complete his series by completing the Derby 10 Mile later this year.

Chris and his team are aiming to raise £80,000.