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...

sad movies...

What song makes you cry or saddens you when you hear it being played over the radio or just when you heard it around? Like, when somebody wails or I mean sings it in front of you with closed eyes? Piano Man by Billy Joel, for no reason at all --- it sounds sad to me. Time in a Bottle , These Dreams and Dreamin' Again all by Jim Croce, I love all his songs, but it always left me with a heavy heart. State Library Victoria Collections I hated the song The End of the World by Skeeter Davis since I was 9. Sound of Silence. Tears in Heaven. Only Time by Enya. What about the instrumentals Song for Anna or Ballade pour Adeline ? I was out of the Kingdom since Monday, well, I was serving other patients on a different capacity. It's fulfilling but the travel or driving in between Clinics is taking a toll out of me. I am starting to get the hang out of it again. This new patient I met was stuck in his headphones when I extended...

and so it goes...

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