About two hours into my dialysis session, one of the techs came by to try out my fistula again. He tried about two weeks ago and got nothing. This time, he was able to hit the vein. However, he didn’t use lidocane this time so I felt every millimeter of the needle going into my arm.
It’s only one needle for now so they disconnected one of the tubes going to my chest catheter and connected it to the fistula tubing. I don’t know which direction the blood is flowing. They also set the flow rate for only 220 ml/min, which is a lot lower than my usual 350 ml/min so I probably didn’t meet my clearance today. There wasn’t a lot of pain; it’s like having an IV needle stuck in you. I hope it doesn’t get worse as they move up in needle size.
After the session ended, the nurse pulled out the needle and put a piece of gauze on the needle site plus a lot of tape. I held the gauze + tape for about 10 minutes then they put more tape over the site and told me not to remove it until 8:00 pm. They also gave me some gauze and tape in case I start bleeding when removing the dressing. Wonderful.
Life with chronic diseases 