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. ...

Sunday's child...

I may not have a fair face, but I am a Sunday child. Forty-something years ago, on a wee hours of a Sunday, my mother had a 10-pounder. I was born from an unfortunate situation of my parents who were in dire need to uproot themselves from the very place they called home since their childhood. Most of my siblings were born and grew up in the same hometown. So growing up in a very different environ caused havoc to some of my older siblings --- who are unable to see the tin line between leaving and living. On the other hand, I did not realize the difference between us and them (my older siblings) even they kept teasing me and the other two younger siblings "Moros". I remembered how I was schooled by my older siblings about the sun, the moon, the stars...and why the sky is way up high. I've learned how greed can cause you hunger and misery from the story of the monkey and the turtle . I even learned the eye-flipping story of the pin...

red-handed...

I found myself staring at my keyboard, my right hand is lightly settled on top of my red mouse. I knew I already caught myself red-handed but there is that satiating feeling my head is experiencing right now... Sigh! I did not bother moved a bone. Kept staring at the keyboard for nothing, without my mind in it. Until I heard Mel calling out -- "hoy! okay ka lang?" I shook my head, propped up in my chair. It's 553AM. I stood up, went out of the treatment area, I needed a breather! It's 617AM, I already washed my face with a cold water, my eyes are so sore, uhmmm, strained. Yesterday I was in my Third World, in our newly opened Clinic. I found myself staring at my hand in the keyboard too at 240PM. I saw 9 patients non-stop from 10AM and it just slowed down after 1PM, not even a soul showed up to 6PM. Most of my cases were pink eyes, 2 kids being sent home from school, a grandma with swollen eye, a dude w...

and so it goes...

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