Ugh. It was a terrible session today. The tech must have hit a nerve inserting the arterial needle. It hurt really bad, probably the worst cannulation pain ever. She tried flipping the needle and it hurt even worse. They ended up using the top-most insertion point and removing the initial needle. I had to hold a piece of gauze to prevent bleeding and that hurt too. I’m not sure why but the pain didn’t completely go away and kept hurting for about three hours. They even gave me some ice in a latex glove but it didn’t really help. On the way out, I bled a bit so it took until 10:20 am for me to get out. Typically I’m out by 10:05 am.
Another weird thing was my blood pressure. I took a reading as soon as I woke up and it was really high, like 177/105 or something. I know I took my medication last night so I didn’t take anything else. Well, I went and took a shower, and when I got out, I felt a bit dizzy. I took my BP reading again and this time it was 110/70 sitting. That means it’s even lower when I’m standing or walking. Even skipping my normal morning medication, my blood pressure got down to the 90’s during dialysis. I don’t know if it’s fluid balance or something else. Hopefully it will stabilize post-transplant.
I only have one more dialysis session (hopefully)…
Life with chronic diseases 