Author: mybadkidney

Insomnia 12/27/2020

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.

Freshly Meal #4

Ha! You thought I was done with Freshly meals back in June. Well, I thought so too, but I received another order at my door two days ago. After eating only three meals and tossing the remaining three, I started putting my account on hold. However, you have to select hold for each week, and you can only go out a few weeks. Anyway, I must have missed postponing this week so bam, more Freshly meals. I finally went back in the mobile app and found the cancellation page, and promptly terminated my account for good.

Some of the original meal choices must have changed since Freshly sent me three of one meal and two of another one. At least I have more variety in June; now I have to eat the same meal a few more times. Since they expire on 12/30/2020, I’d better start eating.

For lunch, I had the Sicilian-style Chicken Parm. Hmm, looks like it was renamed Protein-packed Chicken Parm. Sorry, all you Sicilians.

https://www.freshly.com/plans-and-menu

I also can’t same photos of the food either so I had to take a screenshot. First, the real life meal didn’t look that good coming out of the microwave. The cheese blob was mixed in with the sauce so the sauce was kind of pink and thick with Parmesan cheese. The color of the broccoli wasn’t that green either. The taste was just okay. For 570 mg of sodium, the meal was pretty bland. There was no flavor in the Marinara sauce, and the broccoli was really soft and overcooked. I did eat the enter chicken breast and about half of the vegetables. Here is the nutritional information from the meal packaging:

Nutritional ItemChicken Parm% DV
Serving Size361 g
Calories420
Total Fat20 g26%
Saturated Fat6.0 g30%
Trans Fat0 g
Cholesterol110 ng37%
Sodium570 mg25%
Total Carbohydrates17 g6%
Dietary Fiber6 g21%
Total Sugars5 g
Protein43 g0%
Vitamin D0%
Calcium20%
Iron20%
Potassium30%

I have one more of these in the fridge.

1:1000

CNN reported that one in one-thousand Americans have died from COVID-19.

The United States reached a grim milestone on Saturday: 1 in 1,000 Americans have died from Covid-19 since the nation’s first reported infection in late January.

Census Bureau estimates for the last week of December place the US population at around 330,750,000. On Saturday afternoon, the national death toll from Covid-19 reached 331,116, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Covid-19 infections in the US have reached more than 18.7 million.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/26/us/1-in-1000-died-coronavirus-timeline/index.html

That seems to be a crazy high number. I’m not sure how the anti-maskers and COVID-deniers explain away 300,000+ deaths. Are they saying that the deaths didn’t happen and it’s just a made up number? I’m sure the CDC or Johns Hopkins can put a name to all the deceased patients. Or are they saying that these people were going to die anyway since they were old and sick? I wouldn’t care if they were harmless like the flat-earth people, but covidiots are dangerous. By ignoring health rules, they are endangering and infecting those around them with the virus.

As for the 1:1000 number, several cities in Orange County already reached that goal: Los Alamitos at 2.5, Seal Beach at 1.6, and both Anaheim and Santa Ana are at ~1.1 deaths per 1000 population with Fullerton at 0.9. Where I live, City of Orange, is currently at 0.64. The website also lists California at 0.62, Los Angeles County at 0.91, and Orange County at 0.56.

The worst part is that we’re not done yet. The number of cases and deaths will continue to climb since the Christmas and New Year spike is coming in January, and not enough people have been vaccinated yet. The CDC has a webpage for forecast models and it looks like we will hit 400,000 cases by the third week of January.

Source: CDC

KN95 Masks

My friend brought over some Honeywell KN95 masks from China.

They’re compliant with Chinese standards hence the K prefix. A few articles online said they’re do not meet the US N95 standards so I opened a bag to check it out myself. The N95 mask feels like it’s made from a denser material and the elastic loops go around your head instead of behind the ears.

The same friend gave me some N95 masks early on. I have a larger than average head so all these masks fit tight on my face. It was very hard to breath using the N95 mask so I gave up on them early. Right now I use the rectangular surgical masks since they are usually pretty loose fitting. However, that was during the time that I had pleural effusion so maybe I should try again now that I can breathe.

I’ve been wearing the KN95 mask for about 10 minutes and my ears are plenty sore. I wanted to see if the elastic will stretch out a bit, and if I could wear it for several hours. If I wear the mask to dialysis, they have to be comfortable for about 4.5 hours. Without modification, I probably can’t wear them for more than 15 minutes. My mom volunteered to splice in some additional elastic straps but I think that will reduce the effectiveness of the mask.

Google Timeline Since April 2020

Too bad you can’t select an arbitrary period in Google Timeline. I wanted to see where I’ve been since the initial lockdown in March. The best you can do is select by entire year or month. Since I was still going to work in February and early March, I started looking at monthly data starting April. It’s pretty sad. Excluding home, dialysis, and sister’s house, there are not many other red dots on the map. Even those are mainly medical related (pharmacy, dentist) or take-out restaurants.

Here is the map for October 2020. I’ve only been at six places during the entire month.

The list is: home, dialysis center, sister’s house, Raising Cane’s (Tustin), Jersey Mike’s (Orange), and Panini Kabob Grill (Santa Ana). There are probably some Santa Ana Tesla Supercharger visits but they are typically right after dialysis and in the same mall as Panini Kabob Grill. The other months are not much better. November showed five locations while December has seven so far. The data is not 100% perfect; December is missing my colonoscopy procedure in Irvine. However, it’s only noticeable if you’ve only visited that location once. If you go repeatedly, most of the trips will get picked up.

What if the vaccines only have limited effectiveness and cases counts do not decrease? What if this is the new normal?

More COVID-19 Charts

The news is pretty depressing. There are reports that hospitals in Los Angeles and Orange counties are full of dying COVID-19 patients. A lot of them are hooked up to ventilators and most probably won’t survive past the end of the year. However, they are taking up beds in the ER and ICU so other patients are waiting a long time to be treated or just turned away. What a mess.

Unless these are new strains of the virus, the only difference between August/September and now has to be unsafe social interactions. Looking at cumulative cases over time by age, it does seem that this new new wave of cases is due to younger people.

I think the number in the top chart is for all time since nothing changes when I change the period drop down. From the bottom chart, it does look like the purple/blue colors are growing faster than the orange/yellow/red sections. This fits the narrative that younger people are tired of staying home, and believing that they are less susceptible to the virus, are resuming social interactions like there is no pandemic. I can’t get the website to show hospitalization by age group to check on the hypothesis.

In any case, we’re heading over to my sister’s house tomorrow for Christmas dinner. We’ve probably met them about once every few weeks. They don’t really go anywhere either but my nieces were going to school a few days per week and a few soccer tournaments in Arizona. There is some risk but they are literally the only people I’ve met in a social capacity since March. Let’s hope some of us will be vaccinated soon.

Fistula Update 12/24/2020

Yup. It’s Christmas but the dialysis never stops. Well, the clinic is taking tomorrow off so the next two days get pushed out. My next session is now on Sunday instead of Saturday.

Due to the holidays, several of the dialysis center staff took days off. The tech that normally cannulates me is off for a few days so I thought the other tech would stick me today; they usually are assigned in pairs. However, the “substitute” was another staff member that normally just refilled supplies, such as saline, tubing kit, dialyzer filters, and blankets. He also sets up the dialysis machines for their cleaning cycles between patients. I’ve seen him since my first day at the dialysis center but I’ve never seen him work on a patient.

So, I was a bit surprised when he came over to hook me up to the machine. I was a bit worried at first since most techs have problems getting a clean insertions. He also used the top two insertion points; typically we use the bottom one (closest to wrist). I decided to let him try and it worked out great. He was a bit slower than the other techs but worked very carefully. The insertions did not hurt at all and was fine throughout the entire session. Even when he took out the needles at the end, it didn’t hurt at all. Often I get a weird pain sensation when the needles are pulled out.

However, I still felt like crap at the end of the session. I’m still not getting enough sleep and for me, it’s hard to sleep during dialysis. I also came in heavy again; not sure if it’s fluid or eating more. We only removed 3,000 mL of fluid today though I was about 4.0 kg over last session’s weight. I did get some cramps in my ankles earlier today so I don’t know if my dry weight is set to low now.

Peripheral Neuropathy 12/24/2020

Merry Christmas!

It’s 10:48 pm on Christmas Eve and I’m going through a neuropathy attack. It started after dinner. I was just sitting in the dining room looking at Reddit on my phone when the top of my left big toe started hurting a bit. Over time, the pain became more and more intense. I took two Tylenol and tried to sleep but I had taken two naps today already so I just tossed and turned in bed for 30 minutes while my toe kept hurting.

The randomness of the pain makes it a lot worse. Even after enduring the pain for years, I still don’t know what triggers it. Sometimes it starts while I’ still in bed, other times when I’m just sitting around. I’ve measure my blood pressure and blood glucose levels but there is no correlation. Maybe it has to do with blood toxicity or electrolyte imbalance? Also, the pain point seems to be random as well. Sometimes it’s the left foot, other times it’s the right. There is no rhyme or reason to it. And once it starts, nothing seems to interrupt the pain attacks or makes it dissipate. I would feel better saner if I could understand what is happening.

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Ouch! The pain is getting worse and worse. Sometimes there is a lull in the attack and you think maybe it over, then a huge spike of pain hits you. Again, there does not seem to be a pattern at all… completely random.

I’ve said this before but this time I really think that the overall numbness in my feet is also getting worse. Since peripheral neuropathy is typically related to diabetes, I’m not sure why the numbness is not stabilizing. If you believe the A1C numbers, my blood sugar has been under control for the past several years. Is there a lag in neuropathy progress as related to diabetes? Maybe there is a certain level of nerve damage that is self-propagating? When I think back to when I first started dialysis, I don’t remember noticing the numbness in my feet. These days, that’s all I feel when sitting on the dialysis chair, except when the needles are slightly off target and is hurting as well.

I like to think that if nothing else, I’ve built up a tolerance to pain over the past several years with peripheral neuropathy pain, peritoneal dialysis drain pain, dialysis dehydration muscle cramps pain, fistula needle pain, chest pain from bypass surgery, etc. I’m sure there will be more with the kidney transplant, if it ever happens.

Dizzy Again

This make it the third day in a row that I was dizzy at the end of dialysis due to low blood pressure. Initially I wanted to leave a bit early today since I had an important work meeting to call into at 10:00 am. The tech started to unhook me at around 9:15 am, about 25 minutes early. However, my arterial access point started bleeding after needle removal even though I was applying quite a bit of pressure. It took about 20 minutes to stop the bleeding. Then when I stood up for the final blood pressure reading, I felt dizzy again. The lowest reading today was a 100/48. I did speak to the rounding nurse earlier and she had raised my dry weight from 78.0 kg to 78.2 kg. We’re going to use the Crit-Line again starting next session to determine if we’re pulling too much fluids out, causing the low blood pressure.

I rushed to grab some lunch after dialysis and got home at about 10:05 am. Meeting just got started so I didn’t miss much.

Good News From Medicare

The US Senate passed a bill yesterday to provide immunosuppressive drugs post-transplant for life. Previously, Medicare only pays for three years of medication post-transcript. For patients that won’t qualify for Medicare after that date, they have to find their own insurance or risk losing their transplanted kidney. I read that about 375 patients die each year from losing Medicare and not being able to afford the needed medication. This is supposed to save $400M over 10 years since thousands of patients can avoid a return to dialysis, which is also paid for by Medicare.

For me personally, this means I can consider retiring post-transplant. I’m in my early 50’s so if I go through the transplant soon, I will run out of Medicare coverage in my mid-50’s and need to find insurance coverage for 10+ years. That typically means getting a job and work-provided insurance. I do need to find out if Medicare will only pay for immunosuppressive drugs or will they continue as my primary health insurance, paying for 80% of all claims.

Sad News

Just confirmed an ex-coworker has terminal brain tumor and has ~18 months to live. He started as a MBA intern and was hired as a senior analyst. He was then promoted almost every year until he became my manager. I spoke to our CFO at the time and decided to switch roles and eventually leave the company. All that is ancient history now since almost everyone I know has left that company anyway.

Again, it puts life into perspective. Terminal cancer is so sudden and brutal, whereas dialysis can sustain the patient for decades sometimes. I believe he is married and has one child.

Wingstop

I watch broadcast TV for the first time in months. It was mainly just the news and some football, but I saw a commercial for Wingstop. They had a $20 deal for a bunch of wings and tenders. I’ve never tried Wingstop, having always gone to Raising Cane’s for chicken fingers but since Wingstop was also offering free delivery, I placed an order online. The All-in Bundle has 16 boneless chicken wings, 6 chicken fingers, and an order of fries. You get to choose up to four flavors and a bunch of dipping sauce. I ended up getting; plain, lemon pepper, BBQ, and Korean spicy. The boneless wings were basically chicken nuggets but more chicken meat-like than the McDonalds nuggets. Overall, it was a good deal. The three of us only ate about 3/4 of the food, and had some leftover wings and tenders. I thought the Korean spicy was really spicy but my mom said it wasn’t too spicy and ate most of it. Delivery was actually with Doordash. My one previous experience with them was poor. We ordered from California Pizza Kitchen and the food was delivered late and cold. This time, we gave them about two hours of lead time and the food was delivered right on time and pretty hot/fresh too.

Nutritional information from their website:

Nutritional itemPlain WingsBBQ WingsLemon Pepper TendersKorean Spicy TendersFries (Large)
Serving size2 count2 count2 count2 count11 oz cooked
Fat8 g8 g20 g9 g30 g
Sugars0 g8 g0 g11 g7 g
Carbs14 g22 g16 g28 g97 g
Calories166201324274710
Protein9 g9 g19 g20 g14 g
Sodium632 mg869 mg1179 mg1260 mg1910 mg
Fiber1 g1 g1 g1 g0 g
Fat calories737418283274
Sat. fat2 g2 g4 g2 g6 g
Trans fat0 g0 g2 g1 g4g
Cholesterol24 mg24 mg47 mg47 mg5 mg
Calcium54
Potassium946

OMG! Those are really high numbers but even worse, it’s only for two wings or tenders. The All-in Bundle has 16 wings and 6 tenders so doing a quick calculation, excluding fries, the order contained:

  • Calories = 2365
  • Fat = 108 g
  • Saturated fat = 25 g
  • Sodium = 9663 mg
  • Cholesterol = 333 mg

That is a lot of salt. The plain wings actually tasted okay but the other three flavors were pretty salty. I’m pretty overweight this weekend; it’s like from all the sodium in the chicken and all the water/juice I drank to wash down the salty flavor. Should have checked the nutritional info before ordering.

Year End Donations

I’m such a procrastinator. Every year I plan on donating to kidney/dialysis causes and organizations but always end up putting it off until the end of the year. I probably would donate anyway but it’s an extra bonus to have the federal/California government “pay” a portion of that. I also support my church and a few missionary organizations but have increased donations to kidney/dialysis since it’s become very personal.

This is my list for this year so far:

OrganizationAmount
The Kidney Project (UCSF)$250
Kidney Transplantation and Exchange Program (UCLA)$500
National Kidney Foundation$100
Dialysis Patient Citizens$100

It’s not very much but I’d like to pick one in the future and become a larger donor if I can. I mentioned The Kidney Project in several posts before. It seems to be the largest artificial kidney research project but they need private donations to support development. Of course I have selfish reasons but I can’t understand why there’s isn’t more government funding since it spends billions on dialysis each year.

Embedding Audio

I realized that it’s much harder to embed audio into blog posts than YouTube videos. I tried uploading a mp3 file to file sharing sites but they typically don’t provide you with a straight HTML link. Instead, they give you a link to an audio player page on their website, presumably where they can show you ads. 95% of the Internet is either advertising or porn. Sigh…

Anyway, I really like this song. Lately I’ve been playing worship and praise songs during dialysis, and trying hard to focus on the lyrics. The song title is You Along Are God by Hillsong Worship.

I confess my hope
In the light of your salvation
Where I lose myself
I will find You're all I need

Sing my soul of the Saviors love
Sing my soul unto God alone

I will meet you here
In the life I call surrender
Let the world I know
Be the glory of Your grace

Sing my soul of the Saviors love
Sing my soul unto God alone
Sing my soul of the Saviors love
Sing my soul unto God alone

You alone are God, You alone are God
We declare the glory of Your name
For You alone are God, You alone are God
We declare the glory of Your name

Waiting on the earth, waiting on the earth, Jesus
Waiting on the earth, waiting on the earth, Jesus

You alone are God, You alone are God
And we declare the glory of Your name
You alone are God, You alone are God
And we declare the glory of Your name

Reign in all the earth, reign in all the earth, Jesus
Reign in all the earth, reign in all the earth, Jesus

Orange County COVID-19 Update

Charts are from https://occovid.com/.

What a huge mess. A few weeks ago, I was hoping that the recent increase in cases would taper off. Nope. It’s gotten a lot worse than the initial case spike in April, in both case count and hospitalizations.

It’s pretty evident that there is a huge problem. I don’t know where this is coming from. Everyone I see are still wearing masks, but I really don’t go anywhere other than dialysis. Are people partying it up without worrying about the virus? I would like to see any additional data that provides more detail on where people are getting infected. Even with the vaccinations starting, I don’t know if we can get this under control for many more months.

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I read this in the news today. Evidently, there were some communication issues between what was the expected production volume of vaccines, and the actual post-QA quantity. Again, it seems like we have amateurs running the show in Washington, DC. In any manufacturing process, there is always focus on the product yield. The actual manufacturing plant capacity doesn’t mean anything if none of your products passes QA. Do our government officials not know this? Is this another effect of Trump appointing friends and family to important agency posts instead of experts? I’m no Democrat, but I’m glad we’re rid of Trump the incompetent liar.

Dialysis Hypotension (updated)

Blood pressure gone wild!

My blood pressure kind of went crazy today during dialysis. Since I went to bed really early, I did not take my evening NIFEdipine pill. When I woke up at 1:30 am, I measured my blood pressure and the reading was 212/111. I quickly took the missed medication and tried to go back to sleep. I ended up doing about two hours of work instead.

Dialysis started out uneventful but at about two hours in, I started feeling faint. I had the tech manually measure my blood pressure and it was 89/50. He quickly reclined my chair, turned off UF, and gave me oxygen to breathe. Not sure what happened but I thought I was going to pass out. It took about another 30-45 minutes for my blood pressure to come back up. Meanwhile, another patient across the room was having major cramps and screaming. Just another day in the dialysis clinic.

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Update: 12/19/2020 9:30 pm

It happened again, though not as bad during dialysis. My BP this morning was 148/something so I took both the Metoprolol and Olmesartan during breakfast. BP started okay at the beginning of the session but with about an hour left, I started feeling a bit dizzy. The UF was set pretty high at 3,500 mL so maybe that had something to do with it. Since most of the session has already passed, the tech just reclined my chair but didn’t give me O2. My BP stabilized a bit but the last standing BP reading was 101/something and I definitely felt dizzy again. He gave me some water and had me sit for 15 minutes. I felt better but they were still worried because another patient had the same experience and ended up in an accident driving home.

I got home okay.

Insulin Reprieve, Part III

I received a reply from my endocrinologist this morning. She agreed that my blood glucose readings were pretty good. I am to continue taking six readings per day and if the readings remain in the normal range, then I won’t need the insulin shots. She said I should be between 90-130 mg/dL before meals and <180 mg/dL two hours after meals.

I already picked up the first order from the pharmacy however. It’s something called Toujeo® Solostar®. I’ve used insulin briefly in the past, and I had to fill my own syringes from a glass vial for each injection. In this case, Toujeo comes in pre-filled pens filled with insulin, and you can adjust the dosage administered. I also got a bag of injector tips so you have to replace that part each time. The box comes with three pens, each with 450 units, and my prescription is for 15 units/day. Each pen is good for a month of injections so she gave me a three month supply. Since it’s late in the year, I already met my out-of-pocket maximum for my work health insurance so I did not have to pay anything. However, my work did paid about $400 for the box, which comes to ~30¢/unit or $4.50 per dose. Here is a list of prices for different insulin brands:

https://www.goodrx.com/blog/how-much-does-insulin-cost-compare-brands/

I guess that sounds expensive but a three month supply of my other glucose medicine, Tradjenta 5 mg, costs over $1,000. I understand that drug companies need to make money, but even I find these prices ridiculous. Even worse in my case, I’m not even using the Toujeo yet. The directions on the box says it will keep until the expiration date (November 2022) if I keep it in the refrigerator so I have two years to use it.

Exam Day

All done. The first thing I did after the procedure was to get a breakfast burrito. After two days of not eating and sitting on the toilet, it was glorious.

We got to the surgical center at 6:45 am. There were already lots of cars in the parking lot. I signed in and was led to a pre/post-op area. They do a lot of procedures at the center. The patient to my right was also getting a colonoscopy, his third, and the patient to the left was fixing a cataract. It was super busy with lots of doctors, nurses, and anesthesiologists running around. The prep took about half-an-hour. The nurse did have trouble with inserting my IV; it ended up taking three tries to get a good fluid flow. The actual operating room was pretty small. Excluding me, there were four other people in the room for my procedure: doctor, two nurses, and the anesthesiologists. The entire procedure took 20 minutes and when I woke up, I was already in the recovery area.

The doctor found several polyps that were removed for biopsy. He says they’re probably benign, i.e., not cancerous, but we need to wait for the test results for confirmation. Unfortunately, that means I probably have to repeat the test in three years instead of five or ten years.

Monday Night Dialysis

Due to the colonoscopy, I asked to moved my dialysis treatment from tomorrow morning to tonight. I was supposed to get there at 5:00 pm but I got a call at 4:00 pm informing me that my machine was ready. I got there at 4:30 pm and a unfamiliar tech led me to the chair. I was a bit worried since we just had problems with my fistula Saturday, but he was able to cannulate the needles fine. Since they had to fit me into their schedule, I was only dialyzed for 3 1/2 hours, which was fine by me. Since the nephrologists come around on Mondays and Tuesdays, I saw the same doctor again. He said my phosphorus levels were really high at 7.7. Last month, the reading was 6.2 so something is weird. I’m eating mostly the same things and taking the binder. The only thing I can think of is the deli meat from the club subs I’m getting from Jersey Mike’s. They don’t publish the phosphorus content of their ingredients so maybe they are using one with high phosphorus levels.

The patient to the left of me came in 10 minutes after me. He saw my work-logo’ed clothing and asked if we were hiring. I told him to go online and look but automatically assumed that he was after a factory job. He didn’t look like a salaried office worker, but I probably don’t either. I think I made an assumption based on his race and age, even though I just took a class online a few weeks ago. Not good. He later had pretty severe leg cramps and was still groaning and moaning when I left.

On the right side was an Indian-looking woman. She appeared to be a fairly new patient and just came back from the hospital due to pneumonia. As the doctor talked to her, it turned out she had an infection with her chest catheter, and they had to set up an antibiotic IV for her. So far, I’ve avoided any access infection while on dialysis so I don’t know how it feels, but I heard it sucks big time. She seemed to be in a bit of pain; I hope she gets better.

I left dialysis at 77.9 kg and won’t be back until Thursday morning. My ending standing blood pressure was pretty low at 103/something. I’m counting on all the colonoscopy flush to come out and that I don’t absorb 4 liters of fluids.

Colonoscopy Prep Day

Okay, I started the process. I haven’t drank any of the solution yet; I just added water to the provided jug and put it in the refrigerator. There was a lemon flavor packet stuck to the jug. I debated whether or not to add it but based on some Internet browsing, I put in the flavoring right before mixing it.

The time is about 1:00 pm. I’m leaving for dialysis at 4:30 pm and will hopefully be done by 9:00 pm. I will start on the solution as soon as I get home. I’m supposed to drink 8 oz every 10 minutes and it takes about an hour to start working. Assuming that what goes in comes out and directions says to drink 2 liter tonight. The entire jug holds four liters so two liters is ~68 oz or about 8 1/3 cups. That means it should take about 90 minutes or an hour and a half to drink all of it, and two and a half hours for it to flush though. Hopefully I can get about 3 hours of sleep before getting up again to drink the rest of the solution.

So far, I’ve only had some sips of water and a small bag of CapriSun apple juice. I just opened a can of 7up plus another bag of apple juice to mix. Right now I’m about 80.0 kg with a sweatshirt on so I don’t have much more room for fluids prior to dialysis.

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It’s 8:56 pm and I’m back home from dialysis. I’m mentally prepping myself to start drinking the Golytely solution at 9:00 am. My parents bought me a container of apple & white grape juice. I think I’ll drink some then use it as a mouth rinse after each cup. Or maybe I should use mouthwash?

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Okay, first cup down. I followed it by a sip of the apple & white grape juice, then a quick rinse with 10 year old Scope mouthwash. Before starting, I weighed myself with sweatpants and slippers at 78.4 kg. I want to make sure that I don’t weigh a lot more at the end of the process. I drank the first cup at 9:10 pm and set an 10 minute timer on my Apple Watch.

Truthfully, there wasn’t much taste. There was a hint of lemon flavor but it was mostly water so pretty bland. Maybe I’ll drink slower and try to taste some of it next cup.

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9:24 pm and second cup gone. Really, it doesn’t taste that bad. The only weird feeling so far is drinking that much fluid after being on fluid restrictions for the past 3 years.

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9:37pm and third cup gone. I just weighed myself at 79.3 kg. I probably drank about 800 mL of the solution so there is a bit of the juice as well. I don’t feel much yet. There are some very slight rumblings in my stomach but I don’t know if that’s from the solution or from hunger. Instruction says it may take an hour to feel the effects.

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I’ll keep it short. Had a bowel movement after about 1 1/2 hours. Was on toilet for 20 minutes. I am a bit worried since the first round seems to be over. I only drank seven 8 oz cups so not exactly 1/2 the prep solution. I’m stopping anyway so I can get some sleep and continue tomorrow morning. My weight now is 79.4 kg after drinking about 1.75 liters of the solution so about a liter of water was absorbed. I could be hallucinating but I think I’m getting a slight swelling in my lower leg and ankles. If that repeats tomorrow, then I’ve used up two liters of my fluid allowance for prep even though it’s suppose to go right through you.

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It’s 2:58 am and I just started round two of drinking the prep solution. I ended up going to the bathroom several times during the night but was able to sleep for a few hours. I just weighed myself and like magic, I am back at 78.4 kg, so all the solution either was metabolized or excreted (more likely). Now I have to finish the remaining solution and hope it all passes through me by the time I have to leave the house.

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I ended up drinking eight cups of the solution and left one cup behind. This time, the reaction seemed to come much faster. It pretty much tapered off by 5:00 am so I was able to get another hour of sleep. My final weight was 78.4 kg again so likely I did not absorb any of the water in the solution.