Today/tomorrow is the year anniversary since I started dialysis. To be honest I was pretty darned scared about the whole thing... the procedure to install the catheter... the first treatment a year ago this morning... the first week of dialysis at the center in Newburyport... the procedure a week later to create the fistula in my left arm... and the multiple trips to the emergency rooms in the middle of the night over those first few months as I had multiple bleeding issues.
Today its all routine. Almost too routine. Should I be this comfortable with leaving work early three days per week? Should I be this comfortable with two size 15 needles being poked through my ever toughening and scarred skin each session? Should I be this comfortable with my blood being pumped out of my body through a machine that filters the toxins that my kidneys no longer remove? Should I be this comfortable with essentially living life always approximately three weeks away from death?
I maintain a love hate relationship with dialysis. Life is life and I can't argue that dialysis makes this all possible for me. But I know too that dialysis is not a permanent solution and will eventually contribute to the ultimate decline of my health.
I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist but I also struggle with the true intentions of the company that runs the dialysis center. I'm not convinced that they always have my personal interests in mind as they focus on their profits. As a relatively healthy 48 year old man I often wonder if I would be better served from fewer treatments than the traditional 3 days per week. But two treatments per week would cost the company 20 to 30 thousand dollars a year of lost revenue.
A final thought on this anniversary is all of the time I've wasted this past year. Time spent sleeping, watching movies, listening to old 80's music and playing bad computer games like pyramid solitaire. I would like to be more productive with this time and turn it into a gift.. but I'm so lazy... so I can't commit to doing any better in year two than I have done in year one.
Well.. raise your ice teas with me as I drink to another year on dialysis.
My name is Bil... and I still have kidney disease and no prospects for a living donor.
