I’ve been writing this series of articles for some time now, taking you through the various stages that have led up to my starting dialysis. In many ways we’ve come so far already. At least, it feels that way to me. However, in today’s article we finally reach the point where I start having dialysis.
There I was, in hospital, getting my sodium levels sorted out. I was feeling much better, and the nausea I’d been experiencing seemed like a thing of the past. I was feeling great and honestly expected to be discharged at any time. However, as I explained in my last dialysis-related article, things were happening that I was blissfully unaware of. And those were going to drastically impact my life.
My kidney specialist was running various tests while I was in hospital, checking that my sodium levels continued to improve. He was also checking my kidney function and other markers that impacted on my condition. But I wasn’t aware of the results of those tests.
So I was shocked when my doctor told me that he wanted to schedule my first dialysis treatment for the following day. With my second treatment the day after that.
What I hadn’t been aware of was that my kidneys were deteriorating at a significant rate while I was in hospital. And it seemed to the doctor that it might make sense to start me on dialysis while I was under constant medical care.
How do I describe my feelings on hearing his pronouncement? I was numb, unable to take in what I was hearing. I had known for many years that dialysis was a probability, and that the probability had become almost a certainty in the past months. Still, somehow it felt to me like dialysis was a vague reality that I would only need to face sometime in the distant future. Not something I would have to confront in the next 24 hours.
So much had been happening to me over the past few months that I hadn’t had a chance to process it. I’d been given so much information and had to make so many decisions preparing me for the moment I was now facing. I was still recovering from the operation to insert the AV graft into my arm. I’d only recently been informed that the operation had been a success and that the graft was now fully operational. I was still recovering from the low sodium levels that had resulted in my going to hospital unexpectedly. How could my life have spun so out of control that from feeling like everything was finally starting to get back on track, I was now watching everything crash down around me?
Still, I had to make a decision. So, without knowing quite how I truly felt about what I was doing, I agreed to start the treatment.
I had my first dialysis treatment on 30 January. Soon after I woke up, the dialysis sister arrived accompanied by an imposing machine. He proceeded to set up the treatment, key in the parameter’s prescribed by my doctor, and by 7:00 AM I was connected to the machine and it was filtering the toxins from my system.
With the benefit of hindsight, I now consider those first sessions as dialysis light. They both were of a shorter duration and only comprised one aspect of the typical treatment, that of cleansing the bloodstream. The other part of dialysis is the removal of liquid that the body has been unable to process. But that was only to begin a week or so later for me.
That’s where I’m going to leave it for the time being. In my next blog I’ll share my reflections about all that had happened. Because there was a lot for me to come to terms with.
