Back to training. Set up was a breeze today. and the run went well, no alarms at all. The missus followed the nurses hand during the stick today and tomorrow, she will either have the nurse follow her hand or do it herself....we shall see. Only a couple days left in training and we get cut loose to go home.
Oh that's right, I've been in the hospital. Finally got released this morning. They believe it was a staph infection. I haven't had any fever since late Friday night. I dialysized in the hospital on Saturday morning (They wouldn't let me pring in my NxStage machine) That went well. Had a bunch of inexperienced nurses on the floor. (They had me in the Peds ward, I told the nurses I was the worlds oldest 12 year old) They hooked me up to antibiotics just prior to dialysis, even though I told them they shouldn't do it. The dialysis nurses were like, What's that, and I responded, a waste of time, to which they replied, you're right about that. ROFL They pushed antibiotics towards the end of treatment to make up for it, after that, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING else happened, except for the infectious diseases doctor, who we think is part vampire, cause he made his rounds at 2 a.m. in the mornings. Yes ...
Updated 09-07-2010 at 07:23 PM by sawyerrt10
Wow where to begin... Yesterday was eventful to say the least. when i woke up yesterday morning I felt like crap, feverish and achey. Checked my temp it was 100.1. Got to the clinic and dialysis went fine, except for the chills and the fever that kept rising. Got unhooked and they decided to give me IV antibiotics. And the circus begins. First they couldn't find a IV pump....when they found it they didn't know how to set it up. Finally called Tech support....iv pump broke. So we have to do a manual drip....In the mean time I am still having chills and even vomited some. Finally get the IV antibiotics in me but my fever went as high as 104, Doc says, direct admit into the hospital. So here I sit, with enough antibiotics on board to kill every virus known to man. Finally got to eat some breakfast this morning, Doing all the standard tests to find out what caused this. Feeling much better today ...
Much better day today. Had my Doc look at the arterial access site...diagnosis= bruised so we went a little lower than where it was originally and off we went. Bam Alarm 24....(That one is getting real old real quick) Checked all the lines, realigned the needle, added a 2x2 under the base of the needle and we are golden! Ran a 47 FF at 370Qb took 3.5 hours. Drew pre and post labs today Went over taking the samples for the bacterial test and made a new batch of pureflow after treatment. The missus and I were a little testy today, but I chalk that up to us being tired and starting a new access. (Remember ya'll I have been on dialysis exactly one month) All in all not a bad day.
What a day! We got to the clinic and set up the machine...everything hunky dorey. The nurse sticks me while the missus follows with her hand. We get flashback like we're supposed to. The arterial needle is acting a little funky, but eventually starts drawing. We hook up and start treatment... Alarm 24! We run our checklist and realize it is the arterial access that is not working properly. We do a temporary disconnect and remove the arterial line. Clinic policy is 15 minutes max recycle for a temp disconnect. After some discussion, we decided to forego treatment today. Instead we went over troubleshooting the machine using "Nemo" (basically another IV bag we use as a person) went through all the air alarms, actually got to see them, it makes a lot more sense now. Also troubleshooted the Purelife machine as well. We gave my arm a break today, and will run 40L tomorrow, Thursday and Friday ...
Pretty uneventful day today...used the express warmer and bags for the first time (had to turn it all the way up!) and made our first batch in the pureflow. Gave myself EPO for the first time today!
Well, it has been almost three months now, since I started with NxStage and things are beginning to mellow out. I am dialyzing in the middle of the night now. I get up and on around 2 or 3 in the morning by myself and I am finished treatment by the time my husband wakes up in the morning to help me get off. This routine gives me the whole day and evening free. I don't feel as if my whole life revolves around dialysis. I run long treatments because I happen to agree with the people that believe longer, slower, gentler is better for your health and your fistula. I run 30 liters of dialysate and 350 BFR and my treatments last around 4.5 hours. I usually sleep for about half of that time and the rest of the time I read a book on my iPad. I get few alarms and most I can resolve myself now. We still have trouble pulling the needles to get me off. If we could just manage to do that better this ...
What a day! Everything started ok. We showed up at the clinic and immediately started setting up the system under the watchful eye of our training nurses. Got everything set up within 45 minutes (Not bad I think for the first time unassisted). I go ahead and sit in the chair and one of the nurses inserts the needles. The pain is lessening with the maturation of the buttonholes. Well she gets them in and taped up. The missus steps in and makes all the connections after pushing the heparin. One more double check and away we go. Bam Alarm #24. I had the checklist book in my lap so I immediately clamped the arterial and opened the book. As we are looking at causes, we look at the arerial needle area and start following the tubing. There was a kink in the arterial line just past the needle, where the nurse had bent the line upwards to tape it down. We loosened the tape and slide the arterial ...
Today we set up the machine today for the first time as the training nurses instructed us on how to do it. We discussed the pureflow system as well today. At the end of the treatment, Theresa removed the needles for me for the first time, she also pulled the post lab and flushed then venous line after they gave me some iron. Her only issue was when she was getting ready to draw my post lab, she tried to move the venous line towards her, almost pulling it loose! we stopped her before it moved though... Other than that she did AWESOME! The trainer told us today that from now on we are responsible for setup and hookup (except sticking for the moment) and we will be making out first batch of dialysate on Monday. So far so good... more tomorrow!
It was a good day. Our training team is great, and we are so ready to get on with this. I think we surprised them, today. They weren't planning to actually do any training this week but I guess we proved that we know enough and are ready to get a move on. So we are setting up the machine tomorrow... I don't know about the sticking thing... I think I'll wait a while for that. Now that we've actually started, I'm not so nervous. I'm just ready to get going and learn how to do this. Tomorrow. here we come!
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