Since dialysis is such a big part of my life I thought I would tell y'all a little bit about it.
I go to dialysis on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturdays. I get there at 7:15 am (thats right, WAY too early for me) and usually get hooked up by 7:30. They use the port in my chest to hook up 2 tubes to the machine.
One tube brings my blood out to the machine to get cleansed of the toxins and then the other tube brings the blood back in. They also can monitor how much fluid to take off and give medication through the machine. It's actually a really amazing process and I am grateful for such wonderful technology to keep me alive. Usually I get unhooked from the machine at 11:00 and head right home to sleep. Most of the time dialysis is pretty uneventful and boring. But today I realized boring is good. Today was crazy.
Within the first 5 minutes the machine started beeping indicating low arterial pressure. This happens almost every time but I usually can get a good hour in before it starts. To fix this they have to unhook me and reverse the two lines.
Then I mentioned to the nurse about my site, that I thought it might be infected and sure enough, red and oozy. He did a culture on it and I will know for sure on Tuesday. Just for precaution though, he gave me an I.V. of antibiotics. Within 20 minutes of having the I.V. drip my skin started itching like mad and turned very red. Not fun, it itched soooo bad. So I call over a nurse and she stops the pump and takes my blood pressure, it had dropped to 105/55 that is really low (for me, I usually run around 140/90 and normal is 120/80) so then I get super dizzy and all the fun stuff that goes along with it. So apparently I am allergic to that...nice. I was given some Benadryl for the itching and we went back to the antibiotic I took the previous time I had infection.
Now, I am up from my nap and feeling fine, but it sure made for an interesting day.
So there you have it. A little something about dialysis
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2 Responses to “ Dialysis 101 ”
Katie,
Someone was just asking me the other day if I knew anything about dialysis. Thanks for sharing. We are praying for your antibiotic to work. I had a reaction like that to something I had after Caden's c-section too where I just itched like crazy until I got Benadryl. Hopefully Tuesday will be much less eventful. Hope class was good today. It is fun to think about where in the whole scheme of things we may be. Praying for you daily or more often and especially today. At His feet, Amy
I found your site through my google reader. I clicked on it just to skim it and see what you were all about.
I had a nephew that was born at 23 weeks and lived 3 minutes as well. It was the most horrible thing I've ever been through and he was my nephew and not my son.
Also, I'm a dialysis nurse at a small dialysis unit in Southwest Wisconsin.
I'm keeping you in my prayers.
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