When she was 18, doctors told Marie-Eve Chainey that her kidneys had failed.
“That was the last day I lived without dialysis,” remembered the uOttawa student. The diagnosis was a shock for the competitive high jumper.
“Dialysis is very exhausting for the body,” she said. “I lost a lot of my strength and I was very weak. Dialysis is hard.”
She got a fitness grant through the Shad Ireland Foundation, which helps people with kidney disease get active again.
Eight years later, Chainey is now the Canadian co-director of the Shad Ireland Foundation, which launched its first-ever event in Canada yesterday.
The Simply Fit Family Friendly 1K and Competitive 5 and 10K, to be held at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum on Aug. 15, is a fundraiser and a way to raise awareness for kidney disease, said Chainey.
Himself a dialysis patient for 28 years, Shad Ireland attended the conference by video.
“I found that exercise and nutrition is a great model for stabilizing and rehabilitating people with this disease,” said Ireland, who is the world’s first dialysis patient to complete an Ironman competition.
