At this point Brian has to administer medication via the tubing or get blood samples via the tubing. The medication happens every time. I get Heparin every treatment. Heparin insures that my blood doesn't clot. I also got Heparin when I was in ICU. The injected it in my stomach. I digress. 3 times a week I also get a dose of Epogen. Epogen is a prescription medicine used to treat a lower than normal number of red blood cells (anemia) caused by chronic kidney disease in patients on dialysis to reduce or avoid the need for red blood cell transfusions. The need for this drug is based on my monthly labs. I also needed doses of iron. But it's under control for the moment. These are medications I need I. Addition to the ones I take orally on a daily basis. Again. I digress.
I have vials of drugs. I use syringes to get the correct dosages. The Epogen and heparin have separate size syringes. I insert the needle into the bottle to get the correct dosages. In order to administer the medications, Brian takes the needles off do the syringes and attaches the syringe to the tubing and pushes the syringe to administer the meds. He also has a nifty tool to withdraw via the tubing.
Once the drugs have been administered and the look has been drawn, I'm hooked up to the machine. He attaches longer tubes to my arterial acces tube and my venous access tube. Arterial flows out, venous flows back into me. We check for air bubbles. Because air bubbles in my bloodstream can be bad. We don't care if there are air bubbles I the arterial access, because it's flowing out and the machine will trap them. We do care...a lot..if there are air bubbles in the venous access. We can get them out. Once the bubbles are out, it's time to get the party started! Buttons are pushed. Brian enters how much fluid to remove and the he enters the rate of removal. We record the time he starts and we're off.
About 2 hours later the machine signals that the toxins have been removed and about 10-30 minutes later, the fluid removal,is complete and it's time to get off the machine. Before I go into the end process I want to mention that I take my sitting and standing blood pressure before I'm hooked up to the machine. Every 30 minutes the machines notifies us to record my blood pressure and other stats on the machine. Prior to the run we record the blood pressures, my weight, my temperature, and any changes since the last run. We record it on a flow sheet.
So yeah. One more day to go over the end of the run. This may be boring, but I'm trying to let you know what we do. As time goes on we're getting better...making it a routine and we can explain the reasoning behind everything we do.
I made the reservations for our trip to Illinois. This requires more planning than going without the "portable" dialysis machine. I need to contact the hotel and let them know my supplies will be delivered. My nurse has the information and will contact NxStage so they know where to deliver the supplies. *Sigh*. My nurses will know where I am at all times. The good news is NxStage has a 24 hour service desk and there is a Davita Dialysis center in Champaign...yeah I've been there..and they do home hemo training so we're pretty well covered if we have issues.
Well,signing off. I have a lot of ears of corn. I'm serving sauteed corn for Easter. Today, Dad is going to,shuck the corn, Brian is going to get the kernels off the ears and I'm cooking and freezing it. That takes care of not doing everything on Sunday. :-) And I got enough corn so Carl and Pauline can take some home. Lol. Call us the Fields-Perry take out. Have a great day. :)
Photo of the dialysis machine carriage to get an idea of all of the tubing and a bonus photo of Brian at the race track gift shop!
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