Last week included the addition of a fistula placed into my left wrist... which when you place your hand on it... feels like a kitten purring. Then Monday towards the end of dialysis I started bleeding from the catheter wound. This would be the second time this has happened and the first time had me spending several hours in the emergency room at Lahey Clinic. On this second occasion I spent the first half of the night at the emergency room at Anna Jacques... hoping they could stop the bleeding. After laying there with a ten pound sandbag on my chest for an hour the bleeding still hadn't stopped so we opted to wrap my upper body in gauze and ace bandages. Turning me into a mummy for the next few hours while I attempted to sleep. I had two appointments in the morning at Lahey Clinic so we were thinking that this mummy wrap would get me through the night to those appointments where the local surgeon could take a look at the issue and resolve it.
I got about 2 hours of sleep before waking up to a bloodied shirt and pillow. the wrap kept the blood from seeping down, but the blood eventually soaked the gauze and the gravity took it over my shoulders and down to the bed. I got up and added more gauze and ace bandages to the mummy wrap, then drove myself to Lahey Clinic's emergency room where they stitched me back up. Second time in less than a week.
By the time I got home Tuesday morning I was so exhausted I slept Tuesday away and awoke Wednesday to feeling better than I have felt in years. Was it all that sleep, was it the dialysis starting to work its magic, was it the loss of all that blood, which is by the way tainted blood as my kidneys no longer clean the toxins from my body, and the new blood my body made while resting all day Tuesday was cleaner and so all of that combined with the dialysis magic lead to a general feeling of semi wellness relative to my last three to four years? I don't know... but I'll take it... it felt good to feel good (just call me captain obvious).
I decided to skip dialysis on Wednesday. This is not a decision I made lightly. My chest is quite raw right now. All the bandages being put on and pulled of. All of the cleaning that goes on in the general area of my catheter. All of the tugging at my catheter to hook me up to dialysis and remove me from dialysis. And all of the stitching that has gone on in the area of my catheter. Not to mention that I believe I'm allergic to all the adhesives on those bandages that keep getting added and removed. I really felt like I needed a break. An extra day to heal between dialysis sessions. The center was adamant that I not miss my session, but I talked to the Nephrologist for the center and she backed me up. She agreed that it would not hurt for me to miss a day and try to heal.
I also mentioned to the Nephrologist that I had a theory about why I keep bleeding. You see at the end of each dialysis treatment they shoot a little heparin into the catheter to prevent clotting. Well I'm anemic as a result of the kidney disease and I already have a hard time clotting and now they're adding something to make clotting that much harder... all while tugging at an area on my chest that could use some time to heal. I asked if we could skip the heparin for a few treatments and she agreed.
This afternoon will be my first treatment since Monday. Lets see if I end up in the emergency room again tonight. I'm not really superstitious... but my fingers are figuratively crossed.
My name is Bil... and I have Kidney disease
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