That (beep beep) beeping machine!

[Bajanne]

I just had my 5th dialysis session and I must say everything has been going well.  One thing that is beginning to irritate me however, is the way that the machine beeps if I just change my position, cough, reach over, or think too hard!
I feel badly because then the nurse has to be running over and doing something to it.  Today she told me not to fidget so much.  But I don't even have to really fidget.  It usually happens in the last hour or so.  I am usually asleep for the first hour or two, so I am not even aware if there is any beeping.
Does anyone else have this problem?  Don't you think that the machine is too sensitive?

[LifeOnHold]

That beeping means either one or both needles are shifting inside your graft-- this is very common with new grafts.  (You don't have to be moving for the alarm to go off-- the blood flow shifts the needle around.)

Are the nurses wrapping tape around your needles (not just taping them down) to secure them?  Sometimes that helps.

[Bajanne]

I am not using the graft yet.  I am using the temporary catheter by my neck/shoulder.

[Rerun]

You can SLEEP?  I envy you!  NO, I hate you! 

I don't like the alarms either because I want to know what is wrong and the nurses don't have time to tell me, or think I'm too stupid to understand.

What I want to do is audit one of the home use classes so I can learn about the machine.  They say to "know your illness" and so that is one area I think we should all know.  Number one, if we know what the alarms mean, we might not be so fearful when it goes off. 

[Bajanne]

The truth is that I am a sleeper by nature.  My friends and co-workers will attest to my ability to sleep during a meeting.  I take a neck pillow with me to dialysis, so my head doesn't really have to droop or fall onto my chest, put my socks on, cover up nicely with a light sheet, and I AM OFF!!  Just wish I would sleep until the very end of dialysis!

[O in]

Rerun  this is how it is done in NZ.

Now not knowing what is happening on the machine when an alarm goes off strikes me as being real strange. 
In NZ when dialysis is some months away the procedure is - determine the type of dialysis the patient decides on and if hemo then have a fistula done.
When the fistula matures then comes a three-month self-care instruction period (ALL dialysis patients in NZ, regardless of the method chosen, are self care trained) before anyone gets sent to a dialysis centre. 
(Home care training takes even longer and is only entered into after the self-care training is completed)   All this training takes place at dedicated training units.

At each dialysis centre there are tech staff to assist us as and when necessary (which for me is often)  and are in immediate contact with our RN case managers.  However the emphasis is on self-care as far as possible.    This involves setting up and programming the machine at start-up, responding to an alarm and stripping and cleaning the machine when the session is finished.

At the same time there are acute units attached to base hospitals that do full care treatments for those who are unable, for whatever reason, to self-care.
Home dialysis is encouraged and patients’ homes are modified water filters, machines and all other equipment installed and paid for by the dialysis service.     

[O in]

Sleep while on dialysis – easy – just shut your eyes
Like bajanne2000 I can sleep easily – too easily in fact because (as it takes me anything up to twenty minutes to close up) well, once I went to sleep while holding pressure on the needle site relaxed my grip and YOU CAN IMAGIN THE MESS! 

[Bajanne]

New Zealand is sounding more and more like dialysis Utopia!

[Epoman]

New Zealand is sounding more and more like dialysis Utopia!

No! what it sounds like is Self-Care/Free Labor. After I am done with my session I get to go home. Unlike in New Zealand (According to "O in" you have to clean and strip the machine whether you feel good or not. I myself know everything there is to know about my machine and what alarms mean what. However It's terrible enough I have to be on dialysis plus I pay good money for insurance I do not want to work for free. Setting up, stripping and cleaning my machine is a tech/nurses job. Not someone who is chronically ill. Call me lazy, but I would never go to a center where I have to prep and strip my own machine. I am a patient not a employee.

By the way is health care in NZ free? if so I can see why.

[meadowlandsnj]

Let one of them try and sit still for 4 hours without "fidgeting"!  It's not easy to sit still in one position for all that time without moving.  One day I was on and my alarms kept going off and the tech came over and told me not to move at all.  Yeah right!  LOL