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.

Comments

I won't remember you....

I won’t remember you. I never remember anything that hurts me. Harsh huh! Acknowledging the pain and feeling it is one way but the easiest way there is when you have pain is to suck it up and forget about it. I did that. Done that. I learned to be cynical and stoical. I never remember anything that hurts me. When my father died, I only cried the day he was laid to rest. I cried hard in 2013 when I left my mother in a hospital bed without all her senses and memories…and the day she died. Crying helps. Instead of avoiding our feelings, we can simply feel them and forget about it. However, when events and circumstances overwhelm one to the point where they are an emotional wreck --- there’s always a medicine for it! So, Mrs. M got her dose. She passed away. It was sad. She was a happy soul. Someone just hurt me. I won’t remember you. ...

behind that closed door....

When you have a competent desk Executive Assistant you’re sure to end up with a glory day! Liz is efficient. Ask her to do anything and she will do it in an instant, well, of course sometimes she forgets especially when her laughing buddy is beside her! She works quietly. You won’t even notice her leave the building unless she says her goodbyes! Ahh like her FA! LOL! Sneaky. She is behind this closed door. This door used to be wide open years ago, and it just changed recently, for some stupid reason. Anyhow, open or closed door you can still hear her giggling or I can still disturb her with just a press of “transfer 10” in the phone in from my Station. She is the “MAN” (as Paul often says) when it comes to translating for my Hispanic patients. I always ridicule her for getting a more paying job as translator, @#$% some people who knew how to use the language line are just too lazy they would always call her to translate. Geez. I am one of them. As she passed by my Stat...

this used to be my playground...

Growing up, we have that graphic bible books that we've outgrown. I remembered those days where we (my siblings) snuggled our small-framed bodies to each other just to share those books and (that) one small book about the monkey and the turtle. So... When I am lost or out of sight , I am just in any place or aisle with books. Bookstores is my playground. I’m a late bloomer though… when I was a kid. I don’t have that pleasure or leisure to visit a bookstore, nor the money to spend on books. I was introduced to a library when I was already in high school (as the school had its own library). Unfortunately I don’t have, again, the pleasure to spend my free time hugging all those books in the library as we needed to help out in household chores. I only visit the library on a per need basis But I do not like libraries. There is that feeling of suffocation when you walk through a quiet, quaint, dim lighted book aisles… THO...

and so it goes...

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