HOME PD DIALYSIS: NOT ALWAYS EASY

I'm making embroidered hair bows today. A stressful day around here. Most of the time home dialysis goes OK. I start hooking bags to the machine around 7:PM every evening. Lots of things to do right before such as injections and weighing and filling out charts. I choose the solutions by his weight. If his weight is to high we use a stronger solution. We have 1.5, 2.5 and 4.25. Giving too much can make him take off too much and make him ill. We usually use the 2.5 and it works fine. We never want to go through a overload again. He had one in Oct. of last year and he nearly died. When a dialysis patient has too much fluid it fills up the lungs and damages the heart. It makes the heart weaker and larger every time it happens and a trip to the hospital on life flight.
After getting his dialysis machine ready it would not work. After calling tech support I was told to re thread the machine. We have 4 bags of fluid on the machine each about 12 pounds so its a little bit of work and time. It took me 1-1/2 hours to get him on last night. You would think that was enough bad luck till he woke up this morning. I was having a wonderful time having my coffee at 6 AM this morning all by myself emailing a Friend in the UK when I had to do his stats and unhook him. When he told me he was weak and could not stand up very well I took his blood pressure and his heart rate was very high. I about fell apart, and here I thought I was doing so good. I made the calls to his nurses and found that I probably had taken too much fluid off. Although just to fair to me that was not our fault. You really never know when that might happen. We go by dry weight. His dry weight is 106 KG and anything over that is extra fluid that needs to be taken off as well as the poisons.

It is such a sobering responsibility to take care of someone that has renal failure.
If a renal patient is on Hemo or PD they still have the same problems.

1. Albumin (protein) needs to be between 3.8 to 4.5 so he drinks protein drinks to keep it up.

2. Potassium needs to be 3.5 to 5.5. Too much K can stop your heart and kill you just that quick.

3. Phosphorus needs to be 3.5-5.5 it can weaken your bones and cause hardening of your arteries and body tissues.

4. Calcium needs to be 8-9.5. You must take your phosphorus binders before each meal.

The list goes on.

If you are a diabetic you can avoid these things by keeping your sugar under control.

I receive lots of email from people with a family member on dialysis. I appreciate each and everyone of them.

My friend in the UK is a living Kidney Donner. Her kidney will go to a anonymous receiver. How wonderful is that.

Stocking up my shop on etsy.com Judy