Busy Dialysis Session

Today was a petty eventful day at dialysis. Nothing bad happened but just a lot of stuff came up. Since the one “reliable” tech was still out on medical leave, my nurse just plugged me in using the chest catheter. After about 30 minutes, one of the other senior nurses came by to try her luck. She managed to hit the blood vessel on the first try for both needles, but sadly the arterial one stopped working as soon as she hooked me up to the dialysis machine. I think when I moved my arm to a lower position, it changed the geometry enough that the needle wasn’t getting enough blood flow. The venous needle worked though so they used the catheter to pull blood out, and return it through the fistula. I guess one working needle is better than none.

I also came in at 88.9 kg. which is the least I ever weighted for dialysis. Since the rounding nurse lowered my dry weight to 87.0 kg on Tuesday, it meant we still had to pull about 2 kg of fluids out. I ended up at 86.7 on the way out of dialysis. I also found out that I’m only 5’10” and not 5’11” so any BMI improvements due to weight loss is offset by the shorter height. I can’t win…

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Almost forgot. The dialysis nutritionist came by to give me a phosphorus quiz. I guess they’re doing an education program since I overhear a lot of patients have problems with their phosphorus levels. For the first two years on dialysis, I was usually slightly above the 5.5 mg/dL upper limit. When I was on peritoneal dialysis, that number shot up to 11 since the process wasn’t working. Recently, I’ve been just below the upper limit, and actually got a 4.6 during the last labs on 7/16. If you are consistently high, in the 7-8 range, that may disqualify you from a kidney transplant. How ironic.

Anyway, I got 8/10 on the quiz. Some of the questions were poorly worded but I’ve read a lot online about phosphorus and it’s effects on your body. The nutritionist went over the answers and her spiel anyway. Her voice is really loud so each time she talks to a patient, you can hear her everywhere in the dialysis center. She even pulled out a diagram on how parathyroid hormone is regulated in the body.