Ugh. I can’t sleep again. I am still exhausted during the day, but when I try to go to sleep at night, I end up staying up all night. It’s now 2:51 am. I actually fell asleep at around 8:00 pm but got up at 10:30 pm covered in sweat. I got up and took a long shower, and haven’t been able to fall back asleep. Part of the problem seems to be some fluid buildup in my chest cavity again. I can’t be sure without a CT scan or echocardiogram, but breathing is a bit harder, especially when I sleep on my side. I’m okay when sitting and standing so I can’t be 100% positive.
In addition, I’ve been experiencing cold sweats at night for about a month. I think I’m feeling cold due to anemia. I know the dialysis center has been injecting me (or the machine during dialysis) with Epogen to try and increase my hemoglobin levels. The nurse came by just last week to ask me about bleeding since my test resulted dropped below 10.0 g/dL. I told her I was bleeding for about a week post-colonoscopy so maybe that’s why I’ve been feeling so bad this week. Anyway, I pulled out an electric blanket that my coworkers gave me during heart surgery recovery and placed it on my bed. I would turn it on low/medium right before sleeping and it was glorious. However, soon I started waking up covered in sweat but cold. I’ve since put away the blanket but I’m still sweating a lot at night.
So for the past three hours, I’ve been lying in bed trying to find a good position to ease my breathing a bit, but also sweating because of the thick comforter while shivering from chills at the same time. I feel much better now, sitting at my desk with a thick jacket but I know the exhaustion will catch up with me during dialysis in few hours.*
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*Due to Christmas Day on Friday, the weekend dialysis schedule got shifted by a day. Friday patients were moved to Saturday, and Saturday patients were moved to Sunday when the clinic is usually closed. This means I had a three day break since Thursday’s session, partially accounting for the excess fluid in me. The head nurse already said I may need an extra session next week… ugh, I hope not.
Life with chronic diseases 