Waiting for Dialysis

It's a sodden autumn afternoon in the Northwest, with the sun peeking through after hours of rain squalls. I read some years ago that North westerners have this regional psychology going on – we all feel that we don't deserve to have too much good weather, so when it rains we feel relieved and happy. Hmm. Maybe. For me it goes back to childhood. It isn't rain that makes me happy – it's being inside a nice warm house with the rain outside that makes me happy.
Still, autumn is a glorious season, wet and dark though it sometimes be. The foliage has been lovely this week. This rain storm is making everything less lovely, but that's going to happen sooner or later. It is the second half of October.
We are having a quiet weekend here, hanging around the house and watching Rick. Well, I'm watching Rick. He's watching “20 Million Miles from Earth” on TCM.
On Wednesday we went to the nephrologist (kidney doctor, not to be confused with necrophiliac, although one of my friends mentioned the similarity), and she very sincerely, earnestly, sadly but firmly, informed Rick that it is time to start dialysis. His blood work is coming back with Bad Numbers. This doctor, a nice young woman named Cara Oliver, kept saying how “remarkable” it was that Rick was walking around, looking and feeling pretty OK, considering how bad his numbers are, or as he has said previously, considering that he is “functionally dead.”
Well, so, you can't just run down to the dialysis place and get plugged in. You have to have some sort of catheter in your body for the blood to pass in and out while it's being cleansed of toxins. So bright and early Thursday morning – we caught a 5:20 a.m. ferry – we headed over to Swedish so Rick could have a tunneled catheter implanted. The procedure itself was quick, and the Swedish Radiology Department on Four East has a hallway with really nice couches in it that totally exhausted wives can sleep on while their husbands are getting worked over. I'm not sure if that's what the decorators had in mind, but who ever put those couches there: thank you.
We were on the road home by ten. The incision site became painful for Rick, and still is. He moves carefully, trying not to bump, stretch, or otherwise stress it in any way. He got some hydrocodone (pain killer), but says it does not kill the pain. After two days he's doing a little better. Still complaining, which is a sign of life, but looking less squinched up with pain, and enjoying watching cheesy movies on TV.
We still haven't heard when his first dialysis appointment is. This coming week sometime, we're hoping Monday. I am watching him for signs that I need to haul him back to the emergency room. His numbers really are terrible.
I have a call in to his urologist, who is his primary doctor for the bladder cancer, informing him that Rick is starting dialysis and that perhaps the appointment Rick has for a BCG treatment next Friday should be postponed. When you're in renal failure, cancer has to get in line and wait its turn. I hope to hear back on that on Monday.
I cannot tell you what Rick's spirits are like this afternoon, but here's something he wrote for the blog a couple of days ago:

10-15-09 Thursday
13:00 Returned home with the dialysis catheter in place but it's installed on the right side of my chest in the jugular vein instead of the superior vena cava on the left side as it was in 1997.
And it hurts which is something I don't remember from last time although I was hospitalized then and pretty drugged up.
Although today's procedure didn't include provision for pain medication I called Dr. Oliver's office and left a message inquiring into the possibility. Tori Stevens, one of the medical staff, called back and fixed me up about an hour later and Mary took off for the pharmacy to pick up the goods. I'll probably only need enough for today until the incision site “heals and seals.”
The procedure only took about ½ hour and was done by Dr. Robert Feldman.
Now with time on my hands I'm reading the paper and noting articles with sentence structures that can be interpreted in bizarre ways. Here's one on page A-7 titled, “Record 1 Billion Go Hungry As Aid Dips.” It says that unless the trend is reversed, the international goal of “slashing the number of hungry people in half” by 2015 will not be met.

Mary's back:
So make sure you don't go hungry between now and 2015. It could be dangerous.
One of the really cool things that has happened that we have not talked about as much as we would if we didn't have so much on our collective mind is that Jim Hutcheson got in touch. Hutch, as I've always heard Rick call him, was a member of a trio called The Balladeers back in Germany in 1960-61. They played at USO clubs around Germany. The trio consisted of Rick, Hutch, and Terry McNeil, who later became a follower (practitioner? Convert?) of Hinduism and changed his name to Nandi Devam. We heard from Nandi just before Rick's 60th birthday and he actually showed up at the birthday party down in Sonoma. Nandi and I both looked for Jim Hutcheson on the web back then, with no success, but he signed up for Classmates.com in August and we heard from him there the day Rick went into the hospital, October 5. Rick is so happy to be back in touch with Hutch.
“He was always the coolest thing about our group,” Rick says. “I always thought it must have pained him to hang around with these two lame white guys.”
After their families returned to the States, the boys all went their separate ways. Rick played folk music in Marin County and San Francisco. Hutch put himself through college with his music. Nandi got into rock music and was one of the founders of a San Francisco band called Sopwith Camel in the 60s.
I used to dance to that band at the Fillmore back in 1966.
We are very happy to be in touch with Nandi and Hutch – it's a full circle. I've told them they need to do a reunion concert.

So that's about it for now. Rick has lived through another day. That's good. He is up against some very tough health issues, but I am trying to keep confident that dialysis will make a real difference and get him back on his feet and enable him to finish the cancer treatment. It's hard for him. I try to imagine how he feels, but I can't.
I'm trying to learn to cook a renal diet for him, but I have so much to learn and am lost in a sea of ignorance at present. But I'll hit up my friend the internet for recipes and clues.
Thank you again for all prayers and good thoughts and wishes and expressions of caring. You make all the difference. Blessings to all.