Weekend Update

I am writing to give everyone an update on my dialysis over the weekend. I went in Thursday evening (on Thanksgiving). We had about half of the normal number of patients there that night. I guess everyone had either gone out of town or had moved their treatment time up to an earlier shift so that they could have dinner free. Jenny and I had scheduled to have lunch with her family so that I would be able to go to my regular treatment. Saturday's treatment went just fine too. There were no problems (which is always nice for me).

My pulse is starting to go down. I was between 100 and 110 at the end of my last two treatments. During Saturday's treatment, it actually was in the 70s and 80s during most of the evening. I think that the change in medication is probably doing my body some good. Hopefully there will not be any problems with it. The cardiologist is going to check me again in a week or so. I am still wearing the heart monitor that she gave me. I am trying to submit the scans every few days (even though it hasn't asked me to). I am not really sure what she is going to learn, but hopefully it will be something useful about my heart.

My fistula surgery is scheduled for Monday afternoon. My flow rate is less than 400, so the surgeon is going to attach my fistula to another vein in my upper arm (at the elbow). He is also going to have to put in a temporary dialysis access catheter in my chest. This surgery is supposed to help my dialysis be a lot more effective. The only downside is that my arm will probably hurt for a week or so, and I will have to have the catheter for about a month.

Please pray that the surgery goes well tomorrow. I will update the blog later (maybe Tuesday) to let everyone know how it went. Thanks for reading!