Today was a super eventful day at dialysis. Maybe it was because it was a Sunday when the clinic is hot typically open. I mentioned previously that I had problems sleeping this morning so I was already exhausted when I got to the clinic. Also, I thought I was going to be very overweight so I skipped breakfast. Finally, my morning blood pressure was satisfactory at 143/80/60 so I also skipped all my morning medications, including the Tradjenta as I was not eating.
I was having problems staying awake during the 15 minute drive to the dialysis center. Not a good start. My regular tech was still out on vacation so another MWF tech poked me. Even with lidocaine, it hurt a lot going in and kept hurting for about 15 minutes. She probably hit a nerve by sticking the needle almost straight down initially. My blood pressure was pretty normal at this point at 158/78/65. but over the next two hours, it rose steadily until it hit 174/91/63 at about 7:40 am. Thinking that it was going to keep rising, I took all my morning meds, including the blood thinners and Tradjenta. Within about five minutes, the next reading was 123/73/68. The elapsed time was too short fo the meds to take effect so the 174 number was wrong?
From that point, my blood pressure started dropping more until I was feeling kind of nauseas and lightheaded. My BP got as low as 103/58/64 before I asked the tech to turn off the UF. For the next 15 minutes, we kept manually measuring my BP until a 98/60/65 popped up, but both readings before and after were in the 140’s/150’s. Again, I don’t know if the BP meter is accurate but having the number swing 50 points down then up didn’t feel good. At the same time, I think my blood sugar was crashing too since I didn’t eat anything for breakfast and I also only ate a small dinner the previous day, worried about being too much over my “dry” weight. I ended up drinking a small can of Sierra Mist and taking a few glucose pills to try and put some fluids and sugars back. Even though they took me off 15 minutes early, I sat in the chair after the session to recover and didn’t leave until 10:15 am. I was even more tired at that point but starving so I went to get lunch, ate it in the parking lot, and drove home to sleep. I just woke up at around 2:30 pm, still very tired, but feeling a lot better.
Looking forward to doing it all again on Tuesday.
Life with chronic diseases 