St. Patrick's Day, 2010 & Our Thanks to You Again

On Monday we went to see Rick's nephrologist, Dr. Oliver. She was pleased with Rick's progress, and said it was time to remove the tunneled catheter.
Ta Da!!!
The tunneled catheter was put in last October so Rick could go on to hemodialysis. It is exactly what it sounds like – a catheter which is tunneled into the chest and in Rick's case, into his jugular vein. It had two ends that hung out of his chest, a red one and a blue one. I told him they looked quite festive. One was for blood coming out of his body and one was for blood going into his body when he had dialysis. Don't ask me which was which.
In December he was given a fistula in his left arm, and if he has hemodialysis now needles will be inserted into his fistula. Rick is not wild about the idea; the last time he had dialysis through his fistula he had severe leg cramps, and jumped up to try to ease the pain, and pulled the needle loose, and ended up with a hematoma that covered his entire left forearm. While an entirely purple forearm is a rare sight to see, it's not something you want to have. Took weeks for it to clear up. So from then on he was given dialysis through the tunneled catheter.
Now, though, he has made the transition to peritoneal dialysis, yay, and his fistula is there if he needs it, and it was time to take the tunneled catheter out before it developed an infection.
So, Tuesday morning we headed in to Swedish Hospital, our home away from home, to have the catheter removed.
The procedure was done at Radiology on Four East. I don't know why Radiology is the name of a department that does minor surgeries. I thought radiology was x-rays and sonograms and cat scans and such. Well, this part of radiology is minor surgeries. We shrug our shoulders and go where we're told.
This is the same place where the catheter was put in, and I learned then that Four East Radiology has the best couches for sleeping on in the hospital, at least that I've found so far.
The couches are located in a curving walkway between the waiting room and the surgery area. The exterior wall is windows, so you have a lovely view of the Central District and the Cascades and Mt. Rainier in the distance. But right next to those windows are these lovely couches, with nice thick cushions, and rolled bolsters on each end. I find that I sleep beautifully on these couches. When Rick walked in to have his catheter removed, I tucked myself in to a couch, covered up with my coat, and dozed off until an hour later Rick shook me awake and said it was time to go.
He said that it took two guys to pull the catheter out. One tried to pull it out and failed, so he called in a BIG guy, and the two of them tugged and pulled and wrestled the catheter out. He said it made a “POP!” as it came out. And yes, they had locally anesthetized Rick for this.
Afterward we cruised by The Spud down on Alki and picked up some fish and chips. There was a high wind blowing, causing actual little white foamed rollers on Puget Sound. This is pretty rare. Rick couldn't wait to get on the ferry and feel those swells beneath his feet, but by the time we got on the ferry the wind had died down quite a bit – there were still whitecaps, but not the wind-driven waves we'd seen earlier.
But the inside of my car smells like garlic-infused malt vinegar now, which is nice.
Today we both slept all day.
That's not entirely true, but close. I can blame the sleeping pill I took last night for part of it; but I think we were both a little tuckered out from the two days in Seattle and the catheter removal. So we slept through St. Patrick's Day this year. We've become used to being home again the last couple of weeks while Rick has been using peritoneal dialysis, and have not missed the constant traveling to Seattle at all, and it wears us out when we go. Perhaps tomorrow I will get around to calling all the people I was supposed to call today.
The next step in dialysis will be a cycler, a machine which will perform dialysis for Rick overnight while he sleeps. This is so darned exciting, I can't tell you.
Now, the Thank yous: many years ago, when I was young, I was privileged to know songwriter Malvina Reynolds. Malvina was a socialist living in America, and she once told me that in this country, money equaled respect, so she had no qualms about charging for her records or the use of her songs.
Well, a couple of weeks ago in this blog I asked you, if you could and felt you were called to do so, to send Rick some money, because we have used up our savings and have no income at present. Your response to that request tells me that you love and respect Rick quite a lot.
So we thank you, for your love and respect and generosity. We will now be able to keep Rick insured until May, when he will transfer to Medicare. Whew. We will also be able to pay a few medical bills, non-covered deductibles and such. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are very, very good to us.