Day Three - Infiltration.

Yeah. We did.

I set the machine up again this morning with LOTS of supervision from Ruth (Our rockin Nurse) and Super Needle Nurse popped right into his fistula again, ever vigilant of creating lovely buttonholes. I also learned how to draw his labs, and play with the centrifuge we'll be bringing home. Learned to tape the post tube to his machine so I won't forget to draw that one too before I pull his needles.

Hah. I just noticed the hot pad in the photo. It looks like we were baking while we did dialysis but no. It's for the 'Snap N' Tap' where we work all the air out of the lines because you know, air bubbles in lines going directly to your veins is rarely good for ones health. So the dialyzer (the fake kidney part of this whole shebang) get some good bangin on that hot pad. 

So he's dialyzing away....

We went over more book stuff, toyed around with power outages and the like, and went over alarms. (See the serious book learnin' photo below.)

We'd reached the point of just hanging out while he dialyzed when he shifted too much in the chair and BAM, infiltration. So currently, we are working on icing it, and will only be going tomorrow for our regular clinic visit. The chairs there are vinyl (because really, when you are spewing blood sometimes, like we did today, cloth is not a good option.) and he slides in them badly. He was trying to adjust himself, and sadly, adjusted the needle right through the wall of his vein. :(

Not the worst thing in the world, just kinda icky after having Day 2 be better. I'm an over achiever, and really, I just wanted to finish up the buttonholes, move to blunts, and be all like 'We've never had an infiltration! I'm the best pseudo dialysis nurse EVAH!' But alas, that will never be. :)

We also talked about respite. Wellbound offers respite, and that bit of information really helped ease my brain. When we were doing Peritoneal, it wasn't a difficult thing to imagine someone could cover for me if I got sick, or had to leave town for some reason. With Hemo, that really just won't be an option. However, you CAN set it up with Wellbound if scheduling allows and they will come out and run him if need be. I always worried about something happening to my mother, or what have you, and it's helpful to know that if I have to go somewhere, I can.

So. I got to learn sort of how to deal with an infiltration, although frankly, at that point, MY learning takes a backseat to the nurses fixing the problem, so I have vague notions. :) He's got a verra healthy sized lump on his arm, and I'm -hoping- like crazy we can get back into his fistula by Friday.

Now, on to planning the water tap in our bedroom, and how to re-arrange to make the best use of space when we bring home the hulk that is the NxStage machine and it's buddy PureFlow.