More Information from my Lab Reports

I received some more information about my labs last night at dialysis. The dietitian prints up a set of graphs to show you how you are doing in nine key areas (that she can help with). Most of the information I already knew from my lab printout, like my potassium had gone down between August and September. The new information that I got was that my average fluid weight gain was 1.22 kg (or 1.8%). The goal is to not gain more than 3-5% of your dry weight. That tells me that I am doing a great job on watching my fluid intake. The blood work had not revealed that.

I am still using the 15-gauge needles. I could not find out how large of a diameter the 15 gauge needle is, but I know that it’s bigger than most needles that you ever have to be injected with at the doctor’s office. My arm hurts longer now that I am using the larger needles. It is about 9:00 am right now, and my arm is still a little sore (that’s 12 hours after being removed from the treatment). Hopefully my arm will get used to this soon and it won’t be quite as bad. I bleed a little more with the larger needles as well. In fact, there has been a little bit of blood that escaped during my last two treatments (which isn’t terrible, but it’s not great either). As long as I don’t start freely leaking blood during the treatment, they aren’t too worried. Thanks for reading today!