A Dialysis Day in My Life

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9:00 am Wake up and get shower and dressed.

10:00am Get snacks ready for dialysis treatment time. 2 cheese sticks, 2 rye crackers, cut up apple, baby carrots or grapes. Put ice pack into bag, place snacks into bag.

Make sure everything is ready to go.  Into the bag: Headphones, warm pack, extra tape just in case, Ambien pills, Kindle, and Iphone. My bag of chair stuff is in the car: sheet for chair, blanket, pillow and neck pillow, foam pad for chair, and an extra change of clothes. I look like I am running away from home withall of this stuff.

11-12:30 Do what needs to be done at home, email and Facebook time.

12:30pm Leave house for lunch before dialysis

12:45-1:35pm Carls jr lunch- Charbroiled chicken sandwich, fries and a Diet Dr. Pepper. This is my usual lunch. It does not upset my tummy during my dialysis.

1:45 Arrive at dialysis clinic. Bathroom call, get weight,temperature, BP and set up in my chair for dialysis.

Dialysis machine. All computerized now. Notice the name WEED, for this particular treatment.  They use four letter words to name the machine for each treatment.

2:00pm-8pm- 2 -16 gauge needles into my arm and the blood is running through the machine. 6 hours treatment time. I get Benadryl and anti nausea meds while on the machine. Iron usually on Wednesday. Epogen is given as needed according to blood work.  

Blood work is done once a week, as well as a big results oriented blood work once a month. I receive a lab work report card once a month and anytime I ask anyone for results.

While on dialysis: I sleep for an hour or two. I watch TV. I play on my Kindle or read a book. Sometimes I get antsy from sitting there for so long. I usually last the entire six hours. There are some treatments when I am done, just done early. Staff will take me off when I ask.

8:00pm I am off the machine and holding my needles sites so they stop bleeding, usually a ten minute wait. Then I am off to home between 8:15 and 8:30pm, barring no catastrophes- bleeding or low BP.

8:30-9:00pm Home and dinner for a very hungry person. I amusually hungry when I get off of dialysis and need to eat asap.

9:00-12:00 pm- Home usually on my computer reading email, playing Facebook games, watching Netflix with hubby.

12:00am Bedtime.

This is MWF of every week.

I get ready to go to dialysis.

I go to dialysis.

I am at dialysis.

I come home from dialysis.

I recover from dialysis.