5:30 am Thursday... standing in front of the bathroom mirror I see a giant red dot in the middle of my tee shirt. My immediate thought was that somehow my catheter is draining blood and I'm going to bleed out. But then reality suggests that bleeding out would have meant that I'd still be laying in bed... and probably dead.
I called my dialysis center and they told me to come right in. I waited there for about an hour as they got all of their first shift patients setup into their chairs for treatments. Then they inspected my bleeding chest, removed all of the old blood soaked bandages and redressed the wound. I was home just about 7:00, but as I tried to clean up some of the dried blood on my chest I noticed I started dripping again. Back to the center again... this time they said there's really not much they can do about it and it might just need some time to clot. They told me if it happened again.. just go to the emergency room.
Knowing I was heading down to Lahey Clinic I opted to just add some taped up paper towels to my chest to help absorb any blood flow. By the time I got to Lahey at 9:45 that towel had soaked through too and my newly designated dialysis shirt... a faded yellow Hawaiian shirt, was now sporting a few lovely red dots above my chest wound. I pointed out to the woman in the waiting room my issue and she had me brought into the ambulatory surgery pre surgery area to again remove the blood soaked bandages and attempt to repair the leak. They left me laying there because it seemed to bleed more if I was sitting up or standing.
Two hours later I was in surgery having my fistula added. I awoke from this procedure to a handful of medical personal standing around me and letting me know that they were going to get me a number to call to file an official complaint. I was completely confused.. had no idea what they were referring to. I asked them why and they said because of all of the issues I've been experiencing at Lahey over the last two months. Apparently the drugs they gave me to knock me out made me chatty and quite honest. I guess I told them all about how I've been really disappointed at the poor level of care I've received. I have no idea what I said... but they were all very concerned on my behalf. I felt pretty stupid sitting there guilty of having given them all a little "what for" but having no idea what I said.
Back in recovery I was given the run down of the things I would probably feel and things I would need to do to care for my new fistula and how my chest wound had been attended to and should be fine now as well. Meg and Annie showed up between 3:30 and 4:00 to pick me up. We left and started traveling north on 95 towards Newburyport when we decided to stop for burgers at Five Guys... none of us had eaten there yet. On our way there on Route 1 in Saugus I discovered the wound was bleeding again.. this time leaving a big red patch on my dialysis shirt. We stopped in to a CVS... bought our own gauze and patch materials and swapped out the bloody dressing for a new clean one. Went to Five Guys, ate our burgers.... those tasted how I want every cheeseburger to taste. Then headed back to Lahey in Burlington to get this bleeding catheter area fixed once and for all.
In the emergency room until 9:00 pm... they finally had decided to stitch it up and not just keep applying bandages to help the spot attempt to clot. Home at 10:00 pm... it was a long day.
My name is Bil... and I have kidney disease... and think I'll take the day off from work today.
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