Saturday's Update

Welcome to Tuesday everyone. I have another dialysis treatment scheduled for this evening, but I thought I’d try and update everyone on what happened Saturday night. My treatment was not as good as it could have been.

When I woke up Saturday morning, my arm was bruised around my fistula. My guess is that it was from Thursday’s treatment, but it just took a while to show up. So, when I went in to dialysis Saturday night, the technician wanted to avoid the bruised area. She put in the first needle, going down, in about the middle of my fistula. Now, I had pointed out that the lower end of the fistula and the upper end of the fistula were really the best places to go. But, she got it in the middle, and had a hard time getting “the flash”. The flash is the blood that initially shoots into the needle when it is inserted into the fistula.

She filled the first needle, and went to work to find a spot for the second one. She could not find one, and after several minutes, decided to use the catheter to return the blood. Unfortunately, by that time, the blood in the first needle had clotted, because it was not pulsing (it was just sitting there). So, they had to use my catheter for both needles, since they did not want to attempt to stick me a third time.

As you may remember, we stopped using the catheter because it was not really providing a good treatment. The only reason it is still in is because the doctor wants it to be available for a “just in case” basis. I guess that is good, since that had to use it Saturday night. But, the machine could not run above 300, so I did not get as high quality of a treatment as I would have wanted.

So, if you read this on June 6, then I’d ask that you pray that the technician is able to get two needles in to my fistula tonight so that I can have a decent treatment. I think they are going to try the 15-gauge needles, so the machine can run up to 400 with those. I think that the technician I have scheduled for tonight is the one that had no problems with my fistula the last time she stuck me. I am hoping to repeat that tonight.

Thanks for coming by to read. I’ll let you know what happened tonight on another day.