Kitty Ko: Finitude and transcendence: treatment burden in female peritoneal dialysis patients.

This image depicts the finitude faced by female peritoneal dialysis patients since their lives are limited and uncertain; their abilities to achieve academic and career goals or even intimacy and build a family with children are questionable, as imagining they are locked up in a birdcage. Having a kidney transplant is their only hope, their transcendence. Contrary to the findings of other peritoneal dialysis patients' experience studies, the clinician phase of my research shows that female peritoneal dialysis patients aged 18 to 44 are courageous, resilient, and independent; a clinician even called them “superwomen” despite the treatment burden they experienced. Hence, the Superwoman cape is outside the “birdcage”.