Mary Checks In

Photo: Rick takes a picture (on his phone) of Mary taking a picture (on the netbook) of Rick taking a picture...and so on.


Greetings from the Northwest Kidney Center, where we are spending this week so Rick can learn to do peritoneal dialysis (hereinafter referred to as “pd”) by himself, at home. We are about half way through the program, which ends on Friday.
He'll do his first exchange at home tonight.
Here is how it works:
Rick now has a catheter in his abdomen. The dialysate (dialysis liquid) is instilled into his peritoneum through the catheter, where it remains for four hours. Then he does an exchange, emptying the liquid out of his abdomen, and putting in new dialysate for another four hours. Sounds simple. It requires 33 separate and absolutely necessary steps, each of which must be performed as if his life depends on it, which it does. He is supposed to do the exchange four times a day.
The beauty of this type of dialysis is that he will be able to do it at home, which means no more three-days-a-week commuting to the city for hemodialysis (blood cleansing). Rick is happy to be leaving hemodialysis behind. The tunneled catheter they've been using since last October hurts, and the fistula he was given to replace the tunneled catheter worked okay the few times it was used, except the last time when Rick experienced leg cramps and when he stood up to work them out, the needles in his arm came loose and he had an infiltration, meaning his blood leaked into his arm instead of staying in his artery, vein, and tubing. His entire left forearm swelled up and turned purple, and was one big hematoma for the last couple of weeks. And it hurts. So not pleasant on any level.
I wonder how many of these terms and how much of this process I should be explaining more fully to you civilians. Our life, as I recently moaned to a friend, has become so renal. Kidney failure and its treatments have become our language, our night and day, our rhythm, words, and melody.
Perhaps once we are home our family life will be a little less frantic, and there will be more writing. Hard to say at this point.
We wish to express our gratitude once again for the generosity and grace you have all shown to us. We literally could not have made it without your help. Thank you. I have been meaning to write thank you letters to everyone – unfortunately I have been bowled over by the demands of the moment, and a large dose of depression. It is no mystery why I've been depressed, and why I'm still fighting it. These are hard times, ladies and gents, no kidding.
Having some kind of income again will make a huge difference. I have found money to be a very effective anti-depressant, and much faster acting than the popular SSRIs. But not as long-lasting.
OK, that's about all I have to say today – wishing you all the best.