Damn Venous!

It's been awhile since I've written here. Because it's been awhile since we've done Hemo dialysis.

Last Wed was our first day at home. The nurse came, we wound up having to do a sharp in the venous, we ran for two hours, and called it a day. She made plans to come back the next day until I got him needled, then leave.

Oh, what fun that was. She arrived to a fully set up machine, and we went to work with the needles. Arterial was beautiful, Venous, not so much. 8 needles later, we decided to pack it in for the day and simply try again the next day. Our issue was an odd one. We were getting IN to the Venous, with a blunt even. BUT, we were drawing a clot. Every. Single. Time. The way it behaved, we were drawing a clot laying on TOP of the vein, not in it, and frankly, there just isn't a lot you can do about that. We pulled hard with syringes to try to encourage the clot out, but no.

And so, on Friday, I stuck him again. Clot. Saturday. Clot. We really felt like all we needed to do was get this clot out, but weren't able to do so. Sunday, FINALLY, I got a flash and got the blood almost all the way up the end of the catheter. Then, clot. BUT, I think it was the bulk of the clot, and so, today, we will try again. I'm not setting the machine up prior, since we've had so many failures and I'd prefer not to waste so many supplies. I'll just flush him back with saline and a weensy bit of Heparin and set up real quick if I'm successful today.

Thankfully, we are fortunate in that he still has his PD catheter, so we can do Peritoneal Dialysis when this one fails. Once we hit some smoother sailing, we'll have that removed.

Wish us luck!