Pat's Adventures in Dialysis: The "Finding Time", edition.

Good Thursday morning! I know I know. It's been a while since an entry. I need to find time to write. And time is an issue this time of year ... This year. I'll start of with dialysis stuff. After Thanksgiving a component of my dialysis machine was causing problems. I'll try to explain. There are 2 parts to the machine. One is the actual dialysis machine. Now during dialysis you need a fluid called dialysate. Dialysate is the fluid that runs thru the body and removes the waste. Blood in, blood runs through the dialysate, toxins are removed and go into the dialysate and clean blood returns to the body.

Well the machine, called Pureflow, that creates the dialysate crapped out. The dialysate is created using a premixed sack and tap water. Since the Pureflow crapped out we had to go to plan B. Dialysis patients always have a plan B, C, D and E. You know, that life threatening stuff. Anyway. The plan B is to use pre made bags of dialysate. Yes, we have some stashed away. All home hemodialysis patients do. Well there was another issue. I normally do dialysis at night 5-6 hours at night. When I use the bags, treatment is 3-4 hours. Here's the thing. I use 7 bags of dialysate during regular treatment. Neither us nor my nurse could even contemplate how many bags I'd need for nocturnal. Lol. So I went back to short daily dialysis. Boo. Oh yeah. This includes adjusting the settings on the dialysis machine. Because it adjusts the flow and time and rate of removal.

The company worked with Brian to fix the machine. And sending us extra bags. Yeah. This causes storage problems, but eh. Lots of packages from Fedex from the company. Finally late last week a technician came out to change out the offending part. Now I must say that the phone tech support is great. Lots of troubleshooting. So by the time the technician changed the part, the issue was solved. I finally went back to nocturnal this past Monday. I did retain more fluid than I would like during those several weeks, so now I'm removing it during treatment. It will take about a week or 2 to recover. Tell ya what though. I missed that nighttime treatment. Brian and I both disliked having to break up the day for treatment. And as an aside, Glen had to go to his crate during treatment. He is absolutely not allowed into my bedroom. Lol. Puppy needs to learn more commands!

I also wanted to touch on another type of dialysis, peritoneal dialysis. Long time readers may recall me explaining it. Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) differs from home hemodialysis by filtering and cleaning blood within the body rather than through an outside dialyzer. With peritoneal dialysis, the patient's abdomen is filled with a special solution called dialysate that helps remove waste and extra fluids from the blood. PD requires a permanent catheter is the stomach. Strict attention to a sterile atmosphere must be maintained. The nifty thing about PD is you can do this alone, no need for a partner. And if you freak out about needles, PD is for you. But you do the PD exchanges (dialysis) several times a day. And possibly use a cycler at night. PD was not an option for me because of the catheter in the stomach. I like swim to much. And quite frankly, needles don't faze me. But it is a viable option.

Well that's it for me for today. I'll make an effort to write another entry soon. Update on holidays, house, and Glen. And for the fun of it, it's unseasonably warm out here. Loving it. Especially after seeing the early snow in Michigan. :-(

Enjoy your day!

These are the dialysate bags. And yes, when I travel I have to use this set up. The company will ship the bags to my hotel or location......IF I stay at least 3 days. Less time than that then I have to cart them around myself. And each box contains 2 bags. I use 7 per treatment. I can cart around a lot of boxes. :-(