DIABETES IS DANGEROUS AND THE OUTCOME DEVASTATING

Gary died on his 56th birthday. I appreciate all the emails that I have received from people that had a family member on dialysis. Such a heart breaking disease for the patient and the family.
I have received so much support and appreciated every email I have received. He passed away from a sudden heart attack on April 12th, 2010. He is so missed.


Gary was a sweet man. Always laughing and cutting up. He had type 2 diabetes it runs in his family. Grandmother, Aunts and Cousions but out of 5 children he was the only one to have it , go figure. He was a big eater and we always laughed at him because he loved watermelon. If He offered you a piece of watermelon he gave you half and he took half. He had a big appetite until he became so ill and could no longer eat enough to keep his body healthy.

Diabetes causes, blood clots, heart disease, kidney failure and anything else you can think of. Gary stopped working in Sept of 2008 with his kidneys failing and went on dialysis. A heart attack followed and he became so ill. On his 56th birthday he decided to go to the local garage to play dominoes with his friends and he never came home again. He died with a sudden heart attack. The events that followed were devastating. They tried there best to save him but it was not to be.

You cannot play around with diabetes. You always think that just one piece of pie or a small candy bar won't hurt. It does hurt, his Doctor explained it this way,when your sugar is high your blood is thick. Imagine your blood being like Karo syrup trying to pump through your heart and your brain. Every part of your body is affected by high sugar.

Taking care of your self is hard sometimes with so many things to entice us but its not worth it. Gary didn't look like the same man when he passed away. He could hardly put one foot in front of the other. He was hooked up to a dialysis machine every night for 10 hours and had to wear oxygen all the time. No fun for him and I know if he had a chance to redo all this he would take care of his diabetes. Its a sad sad disease that could be controlled by cutting carbs and the most important thing is to exercise in any way that you can.

Being a borderline diabetic I made sure that my sugar fell into line again and have it checked once a year. Don't let this stuff slip up on you.

Remember to sign up to be a organ donor.

God Bless you, Judy

HOME PD DIALYSIS: BETTER WATCH FOR:

While the reason for this blog is discussing ribbon, hair bows and showing pictures of my work other things go on in our lives that take all of our attention and I want to share problems as well as solutions that we have discovered. We are fairly new to PD at home dialysis so we have had more problems than solutions.

I enjoy the emails that I receive from others that are interested in kidney failure and from those who are on dialysis. I learn from every email that I receive from others.

I think we made a bad mistake yesterday by going to a family Christmas party. Although its one that we go to every year and its the highlight of our lives. This is the fun part of being with our Children and Grandchildren, (notice that I capped those words without even thinking about it) but that's how we feel about getting together with the kids.

Our youngest daughter live 75 miles south of us, they picked us up and we went to Glenpool, Oklahoma about another 85 miles so a pretty long trip for them. All the kids were there. One Son and all his family, wife and 6 children and a boyfriend of their oldest. Four Daughters and their family's, husbands and between them 8 Grandchildren, one Granddaughter and her 2 children, my Great-Grand-Children. The house was busting full with little ones running around. Lots of good food and fun. Santa Clause came in the front door with a bag of gifts, the kids were so excited. Even some of the grown-ups sat on Santa's lap for their presents. Of course we made fun of them.

My husband is on home dialysis the PD type so he does dialysis every night. He has been very ill with a recent heart attack and his lungs filling with fluid. He is on the mend but still weak. He didn't want to miss all this so we went. He is a diabetic and although he is not eating much anymore because of nausea he felt like eating some things that he really liked. In the car on the way up there he also had a pop and that really was not a good idea.

A problem with PD dialysis for some is that the solution they have to use is dextrose witch can make a patients sugar count go up and he has been having that problem. Our routine is to check his sugar at night and if its high witch it always is I give him 10 units of lantus. His sugar when we went to bed last was 316 so I gave him a shot. When I got up this morning he was still hooked up to dialysis and had one more fill and a drain left. He was so thirsty that he had been setting here drinking water. At some point dialysis patients stop being able to urinate and he has. So all that fluid is staying in his body. The dialysis machine takes that fulid off. Since he was at the end of the dialysis treatment it didn't have time to do that. When it came time to unhook his weight was up so high that is scares me to death. The more the weight is the more fluid is on him. This is what causes the lungs to fill up and is life threatening. I will put him on dialysis early tonight to get it off as fast as I can. I will need to call the on call PD nurse today and hope they don't send him to the hospital. He was so thirsty so I checked his sugar and its over 500, another reason we should go straight to the hospital. He won't he is so tired of being in the hospital.

A PD home dialysis can have more fluids than a Hemo dialysis patient can but still need to be careful.
A PD home dialyses still has to watch their diet also.
Albumin witch is protein, you must eat protein, his is low.
Potassium
Phosphorus, a bad one, so many things he can't have.
Calcium,. we don't want that one
Other things that he takes meds for also.

Just about the time I think I'm getting this, one bad day can mess it up. Every time the lungs fill with fluid the heart becomes larger and weakens.

While he is sleeping today with a sugar count of over 500 I'll need to watch him and make sure he does not go into a coma. In the meantime I need to make sure a couple of bags are packed and I have all the information on his meds because if he begins to have trouble breathing we are on our way to the Hospital again no matter what he says.

So its worth it to pay more attention to fluids and diets. A person needs to be so careful.
Home dialysis is easy and we like it but take things for granted and get lax sometimes, now I'm so sorry we were not more careful.

We will be more careful in the future, you just can't get lax with home dialysis. In other words I'll have to nag at him more. Sometimes I feel like a drill Sargent.

PD is easier than Hemo because you are taking fluids and poison off every night. But you still have to do your part, one bad day can cause a real problem. Judy