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ORANGEBURG, SC (WACH) -- Hertis Rumph is at the Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg to have the staples in his arm checked after a recent surgery.

It is the latest of seven scars on the 46-year-old's arm.

Across the room, his older brother, Eugene, who is also familiar with scars, waits.

These brothers are both on dialysis because their kidneys have failed.

After Rumph's check-up he will head to dialysis for four hours, something he has to do three days a week

"I have a wife, I have kids...it's something I have to do to keep living," said Rumph.

It is something many in the Orangeburg area are familiar with, along with surgeon Dr. John Ross.

Ross operates on patients' blood vessles so they can accept dialysis.

"I can look at their arms and tell you exactly everything that has gone on with this patient. And many times, you can look at their arms and tell how there life has gone," said Ross.

Five years ago numbers showed that 78 percent of Ross' patients ended up on dialysis because they were overweight, and he says he believes that percentage today is higher.

Although it's a way to stay alive, there are many problems dialysis patients can face.

They are succeptable to infections, cardiovascular disease, pnuemonia, and frequent stays in the hospital.

Putting an overweight patient under for surgery also involves risk.

"Putting them to sleep is a much slower process, so they take much longer time to go to sleep," said anestheisiologist Dr. Avinash Gupta.

There also needs to be a change in lifestyles, which is why Dr. Ross says seeing multiple dialysis patients in one family is not a rarity.

He said, "the patient becoming obese, diabetes develops and from diabetes they have renal failure this is the way it usually happens. Those lifestyle changes that one family member would need to make is never made."

"If i would have known what I know now back in the day, I would have taken better care of myself," said Rumph.

"The thing I would like to do is run myself out of business, and by doing that we have to have an impression on other people to change attitudes which then change their health," said Ross. 

Along with diabetes, heart disease, and stroke are two other conditions linked to being obese, and the Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg is partnering up with S.C State University to fight the problem with research and community involvement.