Bob's Blog Saturday 10-6-12

Bob Here.
Sometimes, we dialysis patients have way too much time on our hands.

How do you fill the time when you have to sit stationary in the same spot for 3 - 4 hours a pop?

Sure, there are the usual distractions - watching TV, reading, doing a crossword. If you're lucky, however you occupy yourself will make the time go by quickly. Or, if you're really lucky, you'll fall asleep. That's off-the-scale lucky. That's hitting the lottery. Or finding out the nanny you just hired is Kate Upton's twin sister. Super-nova lucky.

(In case you can't tell, I'm one of the unlucky souls who absolutely cannot sleep while I'm on dialysis. Sometimes I find myself just staring at a fellow patient who is snoozing, lost in my own green little world of jealousy.)

But, even with all these ways to fill time, there are bound to be long periods where you're sitting idly, counting down the minutes until your treatment is over. This can bring on bouts of behavior that can best be described as "erratic."

Of course, if you were being less polite, a more apt way of describing this phenomenon would be to say that dialysis patients occasionally act completely bat****. Screwball. Nutzo. Ding-ding-bada-bing. We can be forgiven if we do or say things that might get a person walking around on the street locked away somewhere to prevent further human contact.

Now, in fairness, crazy behavior borne of boredom is hardly exclusive to dialysis patients. Speaking for myself, I can think of some instances of lunacy well before I started on this wonderful dialysis regimen.

When I was just out of college, I was invited to a dinner by my then girlfriend. She was an engineer and the dinner was with her work associates. I thought finance people could be boring, but a group of engineers is enough to make you want to cut your own throat just to get the evening over with.

We were at a table with a group of her associates and they were all talking engineering, including my girlfriend. Every once in a while, I would try to inject some conversation that I could actually participate in. You know - sports, movies, read a good book lately? Even politics, which I normally avoid. Any subject that didn't involve vectors would have been good. But every time I tried to do that, everyone in the group (again, including my girlfriend) would look at me as if I just out of the blue started to recite the Constitution in pig latin.

So, after several attempts at steering the conversation to something a mere mortal could understand, I gave up. I just sat there quietly, listening to these nimrods go on about engineering concepts, formulas, constants, and other such gobbledy-gook. And they all seemed to be having a great old time, laughing heartily about something that was completely foreign to me.

So finally, much to my relief the food started coming. I was thinking that at least I could focus on my meal while my new buddies were off in their own little world. The staff brought a basket of bread and some butter.
I took a roll and interrupted a raucous conversation about electromechanical energy by saying to the guy across the table from me, "Hey bro, could you pass the butter?" He looked really annoyed at being interrupted, but he handed me the butter dish.

I started buttering my roll. Then I hesitated. And I took some more butter and continued buttering on my hand. I turned my hand over and buttered the back of my hand as well. My girlfriend stopped in mid conversation when she saw what I was doing. Then I stopped for a second, then I scooped up some more butter and started buttering the sleeve of my shirt. I was working fast so I was practically at my elbow when I looked up and noticed that everyone had stopped talking and was watching me. My facial expression was one of complete normalcy. I made a flair of my last scoop and swipe of my sleeve, as if I were a chef finishing off a masterpiece.

Everyone was still staring when I took a bite of my roll and my eyes rolled back in my head in ecstasy. I just looked at the group and said, "Man. I really love butter."

My shirt was pretty much ruined, but it was worth it to see this bunch of eggheads just staring at me agape. A moment of silence has never sounded so good. (Needless to say, my girlfriend wasn't my girlfriend for much longer.)

But, dialysis boredom is kind of in a category by itself. Mostly because in addition to being bored silly, you're also immobile. My experience has been that boredom and immobility make for a deadly mix.

But unlike the scene in that restaurant, we're pretty limited in terms of the kinds of trouble we can get into while we're essentially tethered to our chairs. Most of my misbehavior when I get really bored is verbal in nature, although we can still use what little movement we have available to us.

One day, I was on a torturously long treatment when a visiting doctor came to our center. As soon as I saw him, I knew it was trouble. My regular doc was on vacation, so the situation presented itself with two factors, each of which individually can lead to personal misconduct on my part. Number one, as I mentioned, I was already bored out of my gourd. Number two, as those of you who have read my book know, I don't particularly care for doctors.
Now, my regular doctor is great, but this guy was a stranger, and I knew when he got to me and started lecturing me, all bets were off.

So, the guy made his rounds and eventually rolled his little cart with the binders over to my chair. He introduced himself, then stuck his right hand out to shake. I immediately thought, "Dimwit." He could clearly see that my fistula is in my right arm and that I couldn't very well shake his hand. I just looked at him, nodded at my arm and said, "Maybe later."

He tried to laugh it off, "Oh yeah. Sorry." But I just shook my head.

Then he opened my binder and started reading out loud.

"Hmmm. Been on dialysis for seven years. Tolerate your treatments well. Right forearm fistula." I really rolled my eyes with that one. Then he proceeded to read my most recent lab results out loud, occasionally nodding his head as if some deep thought that I knew he wasn't capable of had come to him.

Eventually he looked up from the book and said, "So Mr. Northam, I'd like to talk to you about...uh...Mr. Northam? What are you doing?"

"Oh, I was just...y'know...checking for belly button lint."

"Belly button lint?"

"Yeah. Isn't it weird how sometimes you don't have any at all? And then other times, when you haven't checked in a while, you pull out enough to choke a horse?"

"Well, I..."

"One time, I thought I had a bale of cotton down there. So I ran over to show my wife, but it turns out, there was just this tiny little thing. It was the same color as the shirt I wore the day before."

The doctor was just nodding, trying to look interested. "Uh huh. Uh huh," he said. "So, about your case..."

"Man," I interrupted, "I felt like the southbound end of a northbound mule."

"I'm sure. Now..."

"You know? I just thought of this. Do people with outies never get any belly button lint??"

"Umm...I don't really know..."

"You don't know if they have lint? Or you don't know anyone with and outie?"

Now he was really flustered. He stammered, "The latter. Er, I mean the former. I mean...do you mind if we talk about your case?"

"Geez, I thought you doctors knew everything. What did you do? Go play golf the day they discussed this in medical school?"

When I finally let the poor guy say something about "my case" he made it very brief and moved on quickly to the next patient. I was thinking, "Mission Accomplished."

Sometimes during my dead time, I sit there dreaming up an alternate existence. Nothing serious, just a kind of "Wouldn't it be fun if..." type thing. Occasionally, the images are so vivid that I end up describing them to someone else.

Recently, and attendant who only worked part time and who didn't know me that well, came over to check my machine and just innocently asked, "So, any plans for the weekend?"

I said, "Yep, gonna take my motorcycle out for a spin. Might take it to the local dirt bike trail. It has hills that are so steep you can actually do flips on the bike. Then, I thought I'd enter the motorcross competition. Then maybe zip down to the coast, wait for sunrise. My bike goes from zero to 100 in five seconds flat. Great for going long distances."

She was just looking at me, nodding, not quite sure she was buying the whole story. Then she said, "That's great." and started walking away. I just continued reading my book.

When I looked up, she had stopped a few feet away.

"Do you even own a motorcycle?" she asked.

I looked down. "Well...no."

She snorted a laugh.

"But that sounded good, didn't it?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes a little. "Yeah. Just great." Then she walked away, probably thinking that I was a few french fries short of a Happy Meal.

But it really wasn't my fault. I'm blaming the whole thing on dialysis. Sitting still in one place for hours at a time three times a week would make just about anybody a little crazy.

Wouldn't it?

Thanks for reading. Hope all your treatments are good ones.
Take care.