Rick Writes Again

11-19-09 Thursday
This is the last week for awhile that will be simply three days of dialysis. Next week begins dialysis plus one day devoted to a bladder cancer cystoscopy with no time off for Thanksgiving.
The NW Kidney Center has a policy of “no eating” during dialysis but so far as I can see, I am the only one who complies w/this rule. Since dialysis strips everything out of the blood, people get hungry during their four hours in the chair.
Nonetheless, one thing I've noticed since beginning treatment is that everyone is chomping and chewing when I arrive and it goes on all day. For this reason I've dubbed the place, “Di-alice's Restaurant,” where you can't have anything you want.
I admit that I sneak jellybeans in and try to be discreet.
Another problem is that after about 2-1/2 hours of dialysis I start to become cold and by the end, I am shivering like a leaf in a windstorm. My shaking and shivering sets off the dialysis machine to alarm which has to be cleared by an attendant and adds time to the treatment. So – I try to cover myself early on with a blanket and hold onto the blood lines to keep warm and covered up for as long as I can. The coldest spot is the Hickman catheter in my chest so I keep that well covered and insulated.
Yesterday I was informed that I have to keep the Hickman and its blood lines exposed and visible at all times so I'm just god damned bound to freeze and starve and go overtime on treatment.
Tomorrow I'm bringing in hand and body warmers to stuff in my pockets.
Staff tells me I'm still anemic after a month of treatment which may be the reason I can't get warm as I'm minded to eat more protein (just not here at the dialysis center).
My creatinine level is down to 7.5 though so that's good. It's down from 13.5 so practically speaking I'm still functionally a dead person, just less so than before.
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Mary adds: This is Rick's table top diary entry from yesterday. Today he's in the chair being dialyzed, with his hand and body warmers and a heat panel (overhead infrared) turned on. He also put a fleece blanket under himself, as well as over. We'll see how that does for him.
We had a lesson in phosphorous and calcium today. When you're in renal failure, you have to consciously synthesize, control and adjust things in your body to make up for all the many tasks that kidneys perform, like governing the Pth output of the parathyroid gland. Too much Pth starts sucking calcium out of your bones, and at our age that's no joke.
Interesting – I added a dingbat, and now the program inserts a line between every paragraph. Don't know if that will carry over to the blog, which tends to remove all formatting from your text.
We are living with lots of rain and wind this week, blowing in off the Pacific to drench us. We haven't had one of those full-blown cyclones that usually blow in about this time of year. Not yet. So far we have not lost electricity at our house.
Next week, as Rick said, will be a full week – dialysis on Monday, cystoscopy on Wednesday, dialysis on Thursday and Saturday. The cystoscopy will give us an idea of what's going on with the bladder cancer, which has been on the back burner since we started dealing with Rick's renal failure. As Rick says, we cannot see beyond the horizon of next Wednesday. We don't know what that exam will lead to. I of course want to hear the “r” word: remission. But that's just my hope and prayer. We'll see.