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Dialysis: damned if you do. dead if you don't!!!


 
Pat is screaming “cramps! cramps! cramps!”
Then the machine just went ballistic and gaga with all its might --- beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep… it didn’t stop until I got my butt off my freakin’ throne in the station.
I tried to troubleshoot the machine at the same time alleviating pat’s pain.
Muscle cramps are a common complication of hemodialysis treatments.  Patients may have it in their hands, calf, legs, toes but the worst is in the stomach.  It’s hard to help patient when they have stomach cramps as you cannot relieved it by shaking or massaging their tummies, funny.
The machine didn’t stop beeping and the patient continued complaining.
The machine is complaining now--- its chambers are clotting! Arghhhhh. When Pat moved her arm moved and so the fistula rolled.
Restarted her treatment with new lines and stuck her again with new needles. I know that’s double jeopardy huh but we have to do what we needed to survive.
Cramping can actually be relieved with turning the ultrafiltration (UF) off, or giving the patient saline, or just don’t mind it at all and suck it up --- which is the best choice of Pat all the time. It’s hard to see her endure the pain that often I always turn off the UF off even if she insisted not to.
She finished her three and a half hours of treatment with four kilos off per machine reading. She was okay. She weighed herself. She only lost two and a half kilos. HUH! The agony of waiting for hours and hours and losing only 2.5 kilos.
Pat is disappointed.
G

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