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| One of the successful treatments at home |
Time for a VERY long over due update. Here we go!
I am writing this post during dialysis but not at home. I am back at the clinic having my treatment Why, you might ask? When we just went through all that training to do it at home? Let me fill you in.
When I finally had to start dialysis treatments after having had chronic kidney disease for 10 years, the doctor informed me that I could either have the treatments in the clinic or could have them at home, if I knew someone that would be willing to learn how to run the equipment with me. Home dialysis sounded like a dream come true to me. I would be able to stay at home and not have to travel, and most importantly, I could pick which days and what time I wanted to do the treatments. It all sounded so convenient. As it turns out however, it was anything but convenient.
First came the training. It was a 12 week course, 3 days per week. I could only pick one person to be my nurse, and Brogan volunteered to be "Florence Nightingale". Off we went to Auburn for the many weeks of training. She was a natural, with her experience from sticking animals with needles.
We celebrated the end of training with a Dunkin Donuts breakfast on the last day, and sat back to wait for the supplies to be delivered to the house.
And delivered, they were. When you are in training, the instructors warn you to expect a large delivery of supplies, but you can't be prepared for the sight of the loaded pallets being delivered to your home. There were boxes, and boxes. And boxes. From the needles, cotton swabs, gloves and scales to the gallons and gallons of bleach, and dialysis fluids. I had assured them I had PLENTY of room for everything. When we were done unloading, there was dialysis stuff everywhere. Boxes were stacked in halls, closets, the kids bedrooms, the bathroom. We took out the kitchen table and used boxes. Well, not really but we could have! Medical supplies were everyplace.
Then came the separate delivery of the actual dialysis machine and the even larger water treatment machine. Oh, and the large dialysis chair. One large chunk of my living room now housed those three pieces of medical equipment. However, it still seemed worth it. I would be able to pick my time and choose my days..this was gonna be great!
We were headed into winter, and I was so glad not to have to commute in bad weather to go to the clinic. We started our first week, and it went great. Really great. We were on our way! The next week was when it started.
"It" was a perpetual laundry list of problems with the equipment. The machine would fail the tests that it must pass before being able to be used. The dialysis machine they brought us was the same machine we had used in the clinic, and while we were in training, there were three different occasions where that machine didn't work correctly and we had to use a different machine. Once we were at home however, there was no other machine to use.
We had one failed test after another, and put in so many calls to the technicians and on call nurses that they started to expect a call from us daily. We heard things like.." I've never seen this before", and "I've been working on dialysis equipment for 25 years and have never had to replace that part before." Oh, and one of my personal favorites.."Huh. Never seen that particular warning message before."
It got so it seemed like dialysis was now a seven day a week issue. Either we were successfully completing a treatment, trying to do a treatment but not being able to do it due to mechanical issues, were putting away another delivery of supplies, were doing water testing which had to be done on non treatment days, or were waiting for the technician to come fix something. Plus, we had labs to do once a week, and it never failed but we had a snow storm on lab days. Brogan would have to drive the sample to Portland as Fed Ex would cancel pick ups in bad weather. Blah.
The last straw came 6 months later when we had some weird malfunction message that we had never seen before, and it locked down the machine so we couldn't use it. We turned it off and waited for the tech guy to come yet again. He came the next day and turned it on. It was fine. Ran all the pre-tests and looked ready to go. We were like NO WAY. He looked at us like I think he thought WE were purposely messing with it to get that good looking guy out here to the farm. We told him to try and continue on with it and thankfully, it did fail with the exact weird message we had seen earlier. Phew! He then went all through it, calibrating and testing and finally pronounced it ready to go. He asked if we wanted him to turn it off, and we said "for the love of God, NO! DO NOT turn that thing off..we will do dialysis in an hour or so."
He left and went on his merry way. An hour or so later, I sat in the chair, Brogan hit the button and BLAMMO. There was the same malfunction message that he had just spent the last 4 hours fixing. I poured myself a drink and called the technician. I'm not sure he really believed me, but basically gave me the devil for not going in and IMMEDIATELY using the machine. Really?? So much for convenience.
I called the center and said.." Well, call me a bad penny, but I'm coming back! Come get allll this stuff please." And that is exactly what they did. Boxes of needles, gone. Gallons of dialysis fluids, gone. That jinxed equipment, gone and most likely wrecking havoc in some other poor souls home. My house looks normal again, and although I am driving the 40 minutes again, I don't mind.
I don't think for one second that I am the only one happy. My daughter was really beginning to think we were getting a "sign" that we were NOT supposed to continue doing this at home and that something bad was going to happen if we kept at it. The technicians were positively giddy when I saw them at the clinic on my first day back.
So, that is the story of my home dialysis attempt. I know there are many people that are doing at home and having great success, and I am glad that they have that opportunity. For me, I am glad to walk in, sit down and walk out all done in 4 hours. No mess, no hassle. If only I could bring my fat little friend with me....
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| Miss Molly loved to lay on my lap during D.. |
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