I was all ready for them to poke me in the arm again but the dialysis tech said no needles today. I asked them “why” and the reason was April labs. They were drawing blood today for our month labs and one of the tests is dialysis clearance. A blood sample is taken before and after dialysis and the lab determines if the dialysis prescription is adequate. Since they have to run the machine at only 200 ml/min when I’m using the needle, and I barely clear adequacy at 350 ml/min, they didn’t want to use the fistula today since I’ll fail the test for sure. That probably means I’m only getting half dialysis each time they use the needle. I’ve been super tired and running out of breath each time I walk anywhere. Maybe inadequate dialysis is the culprit.
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Speaking of labs, the transplant assistant called me yesterday to come in for labs. I told her that I was just there an hour ago (she called at ~1:00 pm) to see the cardiologist. I think she made the appointment for me and then forgot about it. Anyway, I volunteered to drive back to UCLA yesterday but instead, she will ship the test kit to my dialysis clinic to draw samples. They’ve done this several times before and it’s better for me since we can get blood out of my catheter during dialysis without going to a phlebotomist.
Life with chronic diseases 