The " Part 2 - Two Years on Home Hemodialysis", edition.

Good Tuesday morning!  Eh I felt punky on Friday and opted out of deep water fitness. I felt off yesterday also, but I got into the pool. It was a good decision. I felt better once I was in the water. It was marathon day...workout routines followed by increased timed nonstop swimming, culminating in a five minute nonstop swim. Whee!  I didn't push myself, but I felt good. Alas, I ate something that disagreed with me last night. Ugh. It caused me to miss treatment. Feel much better today. And it's personal trainer day. Afraid to eat anything. But the work out should be fine. 

So I'm completing my 2nd year doing hemodialysis at home. The first 2 years I did dialysis, I was incenter. You pass dialysis centers every day. Just look for the DaVita signs. It's a dialysis clinic. Doing it at home was the right decision.  Dialysis at the centers is a business and the process is to get the patients in and out as quickly as possible for more patients to get in. Make that money! Unfortuneatly this is at the expense of the health of the patient. Quick hard dialysis 3 times a week is a shock to the  body, specially the heart.  Each. And. Every. Time. Home hemo is gentler on the organs and more frequent. And the mortality rate is longer. Average life span on incenter dialysis is 5 years...average is the word though. People have done incenter for decades. A lot of has to do with being compliant with diet and taking medication. Anyway. 

We get a lot of equipment delivered because of the home hemo. But we've adjusted. And we travel with the "portable" kidney. I've written about our trips. The clinic and staff work with us. I go monthly to meet with the nurses and nephrologist and dietician. If there are issues, the nurses contact me. And Brian. Wow. I can't begin to tell you how much he does. I couldn't do this without him...and his helicopter hovering. I get the hovering though. I've passed out enough times that he keeps an eye on me. And yes. Sometimes it's annoying. Ah well. I need to add that my care team is fantastic. 

Well where are we today?  I've had a really bad reaction to an important medicine. A medicine that regulates my parathyroid gland.  Unfortuneatly it is the only medication that regulates the parathyroid. So now I need surgery to remove the gland. I opted for ablation, a noninvasive surgical procedure. I'll make an appointment with the endocrinologist this week and get this party started. I'll have more info on this later.  Minor rant--- I had to wait for the referral and HMO approval. Ugh. 

That's it for today. I'm chugging along. Good days and bad days. More good. I push until I can't. Brian pushes me also. I haven't been down the rabbit hole in a long time. But when I need to crash, I need to crash. And finally the weather. It was cold last week...snow on all of the mountains. I needed a heat. But this week?  Sunshine and mid 60s. Loving it!  

My setup for home hemodialysis and some, yes just some of my supplies. 

The set up. I use all of this stuff to prepare for treatment. Alcohol pads, betadine pads, heparin in the vial..to reduce blood clots, syringes without needles which attach to the saline bag, a syringe with a needle for the heparin and finally the needles I insert in my arm..the ones that have 15G printed on them. 

What my needles look like. Yes, I insert 2 of these in my arm every time I do treatment. One for an arterial access (blood out) and one for venous access (blood in). The needles are blunt because I use "buttonholes". Think pieced ears.  No pain. And all meds are introduced through the venous access needle. Any questions?  :-D