Bob's Blog Saturday 4-4-09

Bob Here

The fact that I’m known as a compliant dialysis patient comes as a complete surprise to my friends, family, and anyone who knows me well.

That’s because, I was always regarded as someone who had no problem disregarding the rules.

Or, as my wife puts it, “when you think a rule is stupid, you figure it must not apply to you.”

That’s pretty accurate.

When I was a toddler, my parents tried to keep me out of the living room, figuring I would destroy the furniture or something.

The scheming little devil found a way through their defenses, because apparently I made my way in there and turned all the knobs on their stereo all the way up. The next time they turned it on, it practically blew their front windows out into the street.

It was a sign of things to come.

I don’t know what it is, but when someone tells me not to do something, or, even worse, tells me something is against the rules, Evil-Bob takes over and starts plotting ways to get around the expected way of doing things.

When I was of school-age, this tendency manifested itself as kind of a “smart-ass’, or jokester. Someone who was no stranger to getting in trouble.

When I was around 14, in the ninth grade, I had a teacher. Miss Bell. To put it mildly, I was not her favorite student.

It was 1969, the year we first walked on the moon. (No snickering about age allowed.)

In celebration of the event, Miss Bell wanted us to use words related to space travel in a sentence, in an exercise intended to increase our verbal acuity.

The next word was “launch” and she called on me.

I thought for a minute and then said,

“When I saw the questions on your quiz last week, it made me want to launch.”

There was a smattering of laughter in the background, but Miss Bell just gave me an icy stare.

“I’m not sure I understand your use of the word,” she said.

Ever helpful (and never one to leave well-enough alone), I went on to explain,

“You know,…upchuck, hurl, blow chunks …that kind of launch.”

The classroom went into hysterics at this point, but Miss Bell continued to fix me with that same look of pure fury.

Thing was, whenever she started to forget why she hated me so much, one of my friends would remedy that by running toward the classroom door in the middle of class with their hands over their face saying,

“Ooooh, Miss Bell, I think I’m gonna launch…”

And then they’d run out into the hall toward the Boy’s Room.

My instances of rule-breaking as an adult are too numerous to choose from.

I don’t know why, but when someone tells me I can’t do something, I just get my hackles up.

And when someone says I can’t do something because, “those are the rules,” then Evil-Bob really rears his ugly head.

Probably an example you can all relate to was the first time I had to go on dialysis.

I was a pretty sick guy, waited way too long to get treatment, big surprise there.

So, I was in the hospital, had the catheter put in and had started dialyzing, and asked my doctor when I could go back to work after getting out of the hospital.

“Three to four weeks,” he said.

I asked, why that amount of time?

He said, “That’s the usual amount of time that we recommend.”

Uh oh.

Wrong answer.

“Sure doc, no problem. Makes perfect sense to me,” said Evil-Bob.

So, less than one week later, there I was, moseying into the office, truly looking like something the cat dragged in.

I was a little conscious of how I looked, because I certainly felt pretty peaked.

So, I asked a circle of my friends around the lunch table how they thought I looked.

“Great”

“Awesome”

“Terrific”

“Fit as a fiddle”

“Like you were hit by a Greyhound Bus”

The last was a guy-friend (another big surprise) and I always made sure to ask him how I looked when I felt tired on the go-forward, knowing he would be honest with me.

That first week back at work, I experienced pain, nausea, cramping, dizziness, thirst, and a generally poor attitude toward my new treatment.

Point is, it took me a while to realize that it was really important to toe the line on what you were supposed to do while you were on dialysis, despite my nature.

I learned real fast that there were consequences for messing with things like your fluid intake. After a while, I knew that the treatments would be much easier if I didn’t have as much fluid on.

(The key to that is to watch the high sodium foods. Sodium definitely makes you more thirsty, which makes it harder to avoid the fluids that will make your treatment more difficult.)

That is an example of a short-term issue. We all know the long-term difficulties than can arise over potassium and phosphorous levels.

Not pretty.

Those of you who have been on the big D for a while have probably already figured this out.

Those of you who may have just started, or are going to start pretty soon can benefit from our experience. The sooner you start getting on-board with the dialysis lifestyle the better-off you’ll be.

So, whether you follow life’s rules or not is something I’m far from qualified to give advice on.

But I hope you’ll do your best to follow the dialysis-related guidelines that we’re given. Those are rules, I can truly vouch for.

Thanks for reading.

I hope everyone has a good week of treatments.

Stay active!

Take care.