Tuesday 28 December 2010

The adventures of dialysis

What an incredibly fucked night. Ugh. Just the worst. Started getting a headache during dialysis, which worsened when I got home and turned into a full blown migraine complete with vomiting. And the pain was going down to my back as well. Was taking painkillers that usually stop anything in it's tracks, but they would only dull it for a half hour or so and it'd come back. Was crying just didn't know what to do except take more and more. 


Got daughter to buy some cat food, had run out, she came by and feed it. Was going to go myself but could hardly move from the pain. Lying there concentrating on breathing properly.... She stayed a bit, watched some telly and by the time she left early afternoon the pain was finally subsiding. Fuck I've not had a migraine like that in decades. Used to get them as a teenager and early 20's a lot, but seemed to just grow out of them. They would come but be very mild, barely even considered them migraine-ish.


And it came as fast as it went, just dissolved into nothing.  Shoulders are still sore from it so taken another painkiller to make sure the fucker doesn't come back. Ack, rather discouraging. That was some really intense fuckin pain.


In more positive news, my fluid weight put on seems sort of stable in between dialysis sessons (3 days this time) and they're continuing to take out fluid each sesson. Yesterday I dropped 2.5 kilos in the 4 hour sesson, all fluid. Felt it when I got up off the bed, legs a bit lighter and thinner, easier to walk. It's horrible all that fluid; I feel like a balloon about to pop. Ended up 73.3 kilo's end of session, started out at 75.8. I'm usually around 68-70 kilos with some clothes on.


Took a pic of one of their life saving dialysis machines yesterday whilst getting ready.




They have a lot of them there in the dialysis unit, sometimes I get assigned into a separate room of my own. I like listening to music and watching telly (they have a free flat screen telly attached to the ceiling to watch to while away the hours) and I get a touch noisy for all the old dears around me getting their treatment. 


The thing on the bottom left is where it all happens. It's like a rod filled with very fine straws and chemicals, that basically my blood flows through that over and over and it does the same job as my kidneys, taking out poisons in the blood, and I guess making 2.5 kilos of urine! Amazing machine. I got a blood transfusion through that other day as well, they put the units up on the top and somehow did it.  Or they can put fluid back in. The doctors in other depts call them "washing machines", quite funny. I'd not be alive today had I not been attached to one of them Sat week ago.



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