Day: "Too Many"

So we are on day... well, day 'A lot'.

Currently, it's mostly boring, because we aren't doing much 'training' and are mostly just dialyzing in the center while we wait and wait and wait for the top buttonhole to finish. Speaking of buttonholes: My mom mentioned that I didn't really explain what they were. She googled, but (here ya go Mom)

A button hole for a fistula is a LOT like piercings in your ears. It's the same nurse sticking the exact same path every single time. Eventually, a 'track' forms. Then, inside your arm, the vein actually gets a 'trapdoor'. It's a flap, that pushes open when you push a blunt needle in, and slips shut when you pull the needle at the end of treatment. Blunt needles make a HUGE difference in your mobility during a treatment. Why, you ask? Because unless you exert a LOT of pressure, the blunt needle will NOT pierce the vein. (Which causes the dreaded infiltration.)

His lower buttonhole is happy and working. And we KNOW this because not only have the nurses been able to use blunts there, but today, for the first time, -I- stuck his lower buttonhole. I was nervous about this, because I'm nervous about anything I don't feel I have hands on knowledge with. But it was fairly simple, and I frankly felt pretty darn awesome when I got the 'flash'. (Flash: the pulse of blood that throbs in the tubing from the needle when you hit the vein.)

So yay! She tried to put a blunt in the top buttonhole, and was able to do so EXCEPT for piercing the vein. So we had to go back to a sharp. BUT, I got to see first hand that the blunts really just don't pierce the vein. So ya for more knowledge.

I also managed to forget to take my flip book with me, so setting up the machine was an adventure. As were the two nurses and I trying to chase out LOTS of air bubbles from priming improperly. :) We didn't need to toss the cartridge and start over, but it was time consuming.