Rock Hill resident’s father had kidney failure. It molded her career path.
After school, Rock Hill resident Amanda Ballard didn’t go hang out with friends. Instead, she helped provide dialysis for her father at home.
Ballard’s experience helped map her career path. Ballard, 32, is now a clinic manager at Fresenius Kidney Care Nations Ford in Charlotte.
Ballard’s father Johnnie E. Horton, Jr., 68, battled kidney failure for 20 years, Ballard said. He started dialysis at the end of 2001, when Ballard was about 14. Dialysis is a medical treatment that mimics the work of kidneys.
Dialysis treatments can take hours. Horton wanted to be able to continue working full time and be there for his daughter. So the family pursued home treatment.
Ballard, her mother Linda Horton and her father trained for three months at Fresenius Kidney Care when the clinic was on Ebenezer Road in Rock Hill. The clinic has since moved to Fort Mill off River Crossing Drive.
Strait Gaston, regional vice president for Fresenius Kidney Care, helped the family while Horton received treatment. Gaston has worked in dialysis since 1991 and is the former clinic manager for the Ebenezer Road location.
Gaston said Horton was the first patient to receive home hemodialysis, treatment in which a machine acts as an artificial kidney, in upstate South Carolina.
“We trained them like they were employees, all three of them,” he said. “I remember Amanda getting off the school bus at the clinic on Ebenezer Road.”
Fresenius now offers a training program for families seeking home dialysis, Ballard said.
Horton, who lives in Rock Hill, started home therapies at the beginning of 2002, Ballard said. Until she went to college, Ballard would help her mother, who was a nurse, run her father’s treatments.
“That was comforting because I did have my hands in the process and I understood what was going on,” she said.
Horton received a kidney on Aug. 2, 2006, Ballard said.
“His kidney function is probably better than mine,” she said.
Horton said he is healthy and is thankful for the people who helped him over the years.
“I deem myself one of the lucky ones,” he said.
Ballard credits her experience as a child and multiple mentors for her choice in career.
“There’s been this design from leaders and my parents behind me the whole time interweaving my whole career path,” Ballard said. “The seeds were planted early on.”
Ballard attended Coastal Carolina University in Conway as an elementary education major, but switched to nursing her junior year.
Ballard said Gaston helped her find the right school to pursue nursing. She transferred to the University of South Carolina in Columbia and attended the USC Lancaster satellite campus.
Ballard, now a registered nurse, worked as a technician for Fresenius through school. She took the role as clinic manager at the Nations Ford facility in October.
“I’m very proud of her,” Horton said.
While helping her father, Ballard saw what being on dialysis is like for both the patients and their families.
“Amanda’s got a unique connection with her patients that the rest of us don’t have as far as what she experienced with her dad,” Gaston said. “It’s an ordeal to go through and life-changing.”
Ballard also witnessed changes to dialysis treatments. Horton was able to switch to NxStage, a smaller, portable hemodialysis machine that weighs less than 100 pounds. It’s now an option for hundreds of people, Gaston said.
“(Horton) was one of the very first Next Stage patients in the Carolinas,” Gaston said. “He is a pioneer in home hemo, especially in York County.”
Ballard said she loves what she does.
“We become a work family. Our patients, we see them so frequently, they become our patient family,” she said. “I’m grateful for the experiences, the opportunity, how it’s molded me professionally and personally.”
Dialysis resources
- Fresenius Kidney Care: freseniuskidneycare.com, 888-373-1470
- National Kidney Foundation: kidney.org, 800-622-9010
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: cdc.gov/dialysis, 800-232-4636
- S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control: scdhec.gov, 803-898-3432
This story was originally published December 30, 2019 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Rock Hill resident’s father had kidney failure. It molded her career path.."
