Maj's Kidney

The Story Part 9

Nothing can prepare you for dialysis. Whether they are doing it by attaching tubes into your chest, the temporay access point, or sticking needles in your arm. My understanding is the purpose is to clean your blood of the toxins your body creates but can’t process out of you because the kidneys,whose function it is, can’t do it anymore. All I know is if anyone ever tells you it isn’t that bad, they are lying. I had my first 3 treatments in the hospital, and they really weren’t that bad. But my first treatment at the dialysis was hell. I had severe cramps.Very severe cramps. On the way home after my wife picked me up, I looked at her and told her that if this was what my quality of life was going to be like from now on, I didn’t think I wanted to continue living. Take a minute and imagine what something must be like to make a person have a thought like that.  My dialysis has gotten a bit better since then, but not much.  I am starting my 4th month of it and there are some things I know are fact. On Tuesdays,Thursdays and Saturday, my life is going to be involved with doing the dialysis and thast about all that will be accomplished  on those days. My time on the machine is set at 3 hours. Now lets add in the time to get me hooked up. Some of the nurses are excellent at it and can get me hooked up in 5 minutes or less. Others can take almost 1/2 an hour. Now take the same amount of time to disconnect me from the machine and what they tell you is a 3 hour process is actually almost 4. Add the travel time to and from the center,and your at 4-4.5 hours. Towards the last hour of the treatment I get a major headache and the majority of the time I get major cramps and my blood pressure goes up. I have had what can be considered a “good” treatment probably 4 times in the past three and 1/2 months. Most treatment days within an hour or two of getting home, I fall asleep. Not intentionally, but the process somehow wipes you of all your energy. I have talked to other patients at the center and most tell me they have the same problem. So basically 3 days out of 7 you are useless to do anything productive.

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