I've been on the machine now for a little over two years and along with the 8 hours I give up each week I also have come to accept that following each session I will have a terrible head ache and will wake up the following morning with the sensation of having a mild hangover. Not fun, but still... life. I always choose life.
Recently I was on vacation. We took a little road trip through Connecticut and New York. I scheduled two sessions throughout my vacation so as to not risk feeling sick. I probably could have skipped and been fine, but why risk it, right?For the most part these visit went swimmingly. In CT they were unaware of my special dialyser... oh wait... I forgot to tell you about my special dialyser. Let me back step for a minute:
When I first went on dialysis I was experiencing this sensation of losing my breath (imagine stepping into a freezing cold shower) every time the process started. After a few minutes it would go away. I had mentioned it to the staff and my nephrologist and they thought that was unusual so they tried a different dialyser (A dialyser is just a filter and it looks like the same kind of filter you might have in your house if you have a water purifier system). The new dialyser prevented that sensation so it was decided that I was allergic to the "normal" dialyser. Back to CT.
So as I inquired about their use of the special dialyser they didn't seem to know anything about it. I called back to my center and the manager there told the center I was at the name of the dialyser and so they reset the machine with that dialyser and I was off and dialysing... 45 minutes later than planned, but no harm no foul.
In upstate NY I asked the same thing... "You have my special dialyser, right?" They didn't seem to know anything about it. Again I called my center and they gave the name of the dialyser. This time the center in NY said "oh, well that's what we use on every machine." I looked around the room and could see that every dialyser was exactly the same as every dialyser back in Newburyport but mine. I know mine because it has a blue top and the "normal" dialyser has a dark grey top. I was unwilling to argue with them, I decided to just suck it up and let them use the normal dialyser.I asked them to only take 0.5KG off of me and they were fine with that, my numbers suggested I could actually afford to have less. The session went fine until the very end as they were about to take me off the machine and I started cramping. This is very unusual for me unless they take too much off me. Turns out the woman messed up and somehow set the machine to take 3KG off of me instead of 0.5KG. Yikes!
Usually this would have had me pass out, I can't even explain why I wasn't half dead in the chair. But more importantly... I wasn't even slightly headachey. what was that all about? I always get a headache and the more they take off of me the more headachey I get... WTF is going on here?
I've been pondering this since it all went down. the only difference was the dialyser and the fact that they took too much off me. Taking too much off of me should have made me exceptionally headachey. why didn't it? It had to be the farquing dialyser.
I mentioned it to my center when I got home and the manager told me it couldn't be the dialyser.. the only difference between them was the method of sterilizing, otherwise they are exactly the same. They continued to use the special dialyser and I continued to get headaches.
Last week I saw my Nephrologist for the first time since returning from vacation. I told her the story and she agreed that we should at least test the theory. Last night for the first time we tried the "normal" dialyser. I came home headache free. I slept like a baby.
I can't call it science yet, but I suspect that this will be true on Friday of this week too. I'll keep you informed on how it all turns out.
My name is Bil... and I have kidney disease.
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