Always telling the story
Yesterday, while I was on dialysis, a secretary from the Vascular Clinic at Midlands Regional Hospital in Tullamore called to schedule an arm scan. I’ve been waiting for this scan for several months to determine if there’s enough space in my arm for another arteriovenous (AV) fistula, which would aid in dialysis access. Given the … Read more
It’s been a relatively quiet day in the hospital today. With no visitors, it has meant that I have had to find other things to do. This morning I attended a church service online via Zoom. They were talking about Christian meditation. It was great to hear them mention the Jesus Prayer, Jesus Christ, have … Read more
Just as I thought we were getting over the rollercoaster of the viral load being or not being undetectable and the change in my antiretrovirals to treat the HIV, there was another lurch in my medical treatment. Last Wednesday, I attended my usual dialysis clinic as normal. Except that nothing was normal. I think we … Read more
All haemodialysis machines have tubes that take blood away from the body of the patient and tubes that return the blood after it has been cleaned. For ease of identification, many machines clearly mark these as red (from the body (or arterial)) and blue (return to the body (or venous)). It’s a simple way to … Read more
By days, weeks, months, and years, kidney dialysis patients learn to live with their thrice-weekly life-saving dialysis treatment. The alternative of not having treatment at all is much worse. Most of us still want to live; so, in order that we might continue to do so, we travel from our home to our dialysis unit … Read more
So, on Friday, I had created a table for recording particular stats whilst on dialysis. Then a friend suggested that I use a bullet journal to make things easier, so I have done that. I then realised that I had a blank page to the left of my table, and so have used that to … Read more
Dialysis, like much of healthcare, is all about numbers. The numbers may be examined on a yearly, quarterly, monthly, or weekly basis. Some are checked hourly during each dialysis session. Usually, these hourly numbers are registered and checked by the computer system and logged that way. However, since the attack on the HSE computer system … Read more