Dialysis Surgical Procedures

I was replying to a Reddit post on r/dialysis, and for some reason, I started counting the number of surgical procedures I had related to dialysis. Here’s the list:

• First chest HD catheter in (July 2017)
• PD catheter in (April 2019)
• First chest HD catheter out (June 2019)
• Second chest HD catheter in (November 2019)
• PD catheter out + fistula in (January 2020)
• Fistulagram (August 2020)
• Second chest HD catheter out (September 2020)

All of these were outpatient procedures, except for putting in the second chest catheter. I was already in the hospital for my heart surgery, otherwise it would have been done in a few hours total. All together, I was under full anesthesia for only two items on the list that included the peritoneal dialysis catheter. The last one is best. A physician assistant didn’t know I was on a blood thinner so he just cut some sutures and yanked the chest catheter out. Blood spurted out of the chest opening and he freaked out a bit.