Training.....

[tyefly]

  Well  Training is going and I am finishing up today and ending my first week...... I am running 20L FF33 400 for 2.5 hours.......   training has been taking around 5 hours a day..... I don't think they have trained many people and they seem to need to refer to the book on almost everything...... I was a little surprised with that....  The manual seems  very straight forward and easy to understand..... Cannuation is going to be the hard part of all of this....... I have only been successful once...... all the other time, I go in and can find anything or there is so much resistance that I am afraid to poke too hard...... don't want to infiltrate....  I am hoping today will be a better day with cannulation......  I am a little tired to day from all the stress from training all week..... I was only Dialysis for three hours  three times a week....thats 9 hours...with 0.5 set up and take off time  I was only spending roughly 10 to 11 hours on D per week......Now   I am spending 5 to 6 hours every day  five days a weeks which is going up to 25 hours a week.....    So I have more than doubled my time involved with Dialysis.... I  know that freedom does cost.....   And I am sure it will be worth it in time......   

[cookie2008]

To me it is worth the extra time doing my treatment with the Nxstage, I get better labs and I have less restrictions, and I get to spend more time with my family. 

[Malibu]

Congrats!  You are on your way to home dialysis.  I don't know if cannulation gets any easier.  My hubby is so nervous every day I just want to give him a swig of scotch!  After he does the Arterial line he has to remove his mask and wipe the sweat off his face before he can do the Venous line.  Poor guy.  But he does it. 

[willowtreewren]

Kathy, It really, really does get easier. Those first days that we were in training I felt like a real doofus. The learning curve was very steep. But it flattens out.

[Hanify]

What do you mean ONLY DONE IT ONCE!!  OMG  how fantastic that you've done it!!! I'm so impressed!  You'll get there.

[HubbysPartner]

Hang in there, Kathy, it does get easier as you go along.  Cannulation is tough in the beginning, but you will get it down.  If you are doing buttonholes, pretty soon they will be established and then it won't be so hard to put the needles in.

[tyefly]

  Training is going great.....   ran thru bags and now we will run pureflo......  I am self cannulating now  with no problems......  how easy was that......duh!!!!!!!!!!    Everything seem to be explained in the manual...  I will say that it does take alot more time than I thought..... I was only doing 3 hours 3 x week...... now they want me to run 2.45 hours 6 x week......   they said if my labs look good I may beable to run less......   My labs have always look good.......   anyway ......   I love alarm 5   and  look forward to  000..........

[HubbysPartner]

Glad everything is going so well, Kathy.  Yeah, we love that number 5 too.    

[cookie2008]

 

[Sunny]

Good news. Sounds like you have done well in your training and you're becoming a pro.

[Hanify]

Wow Kathy - you are such an inspration.  I'm not so worried about going onto haemo one day having read about your journey.  Thanks so much for sharing the ups and downs.

[willowtreewren]

"Alarm 5" - never even think about it, but I have been know to stop treatment instead of mute the alarm!

 

[Malibu]

Glad it is going well!  We are approaching our one month 'at home' anniversary.  I am awaiting the time when all these guys say it will be second nature and I will stop worrying so much.  :O)))

MM is still freaked out by self cannulation, tyefly how are you taking it?

I love the 5 as well, and of course my favorite is 000! 

Willow, for a couple days when the machine was primed and we were supposed to hit the yellow button to put it into 23 MM kept hitting STOP instead.  OOPS.  We waisted a lot of cartriges doing that. 

[willowtreewren]

Did you try hitting the green kidney button to reset it?

We just try whatever button is lit! 

[silverhead]

When you hit the red instead of the yellow button, take the saline bag and lay it on the floor, Turn off the cycler power, open the machine and the fluid will drain back into the bag, turn power back on, close the machine, re-hang the bag and press the prime, you will have to go through the prime process again, but it saves having to change cartridges.....Don't ask me how I learned that lesson......

[Malibu]

Thanks for the pointers.  No we did not hit treatment,  I know you can do this and somehow get all the air out.  To be honest we were flustered every time and just got a new cartridge.  Silverhead, how do you go through the priming process again?  After draining saline back, leave the machine off for over 2 minutes, insert cartridge again and go?  Thanks

[willowtreewren]

Oh, my! we have NEVER had to lower the saline bag and reprime. *wink wink* 

Nor have we ever forgotten to clamp a line before opening it. Not even a blood line! 

And we have absolutely never, ever had to do a manual rinseback.

So, there really isn't any reason to learn how to do these things during training. 

[silverhead]

If you hit the wrong button:
Turn off power switch on the cycler
Lift the handle and "open" the machine, leave the cartridge in place
Lower the saline bag to the floor, majority of the saline will drain back into it.
turn power switch back on
when you get the 2 blinking yellow bars, close the machine
press the prime button
rush around the house and make sure no spies saw you do this....
Just remember   "feces occurs"

[Jean]

You folks are just amazing, and Kathy, you are wonder woman as far as I am concerned. Gee Whiz!!!!!!

[HubbysPartner]

No, Aleta, we wouldn't ever make those newbie mistakes      
We wouldn't accidentally hit the treatment button instead of the get water button during rinseback either, right     

[willowtreewren]

We wouldn't accidentally hit the treatment button instead of the get water button during rinseback either, right     

Noooo! Never a simple mistake like THAT! *wink wink*

Seriously, though, the most annoying alarm is moisture in the PureFlow tub. It waits until the SAK is nearly empty and is not pressing on the bottom of the tub so much. At that point moisture from a "not quite tight enough" orange connection can seep under the SAK. We have needed to end the last treatment of the SAK early a couple of times due to that error.

Ya woulda thunk we'd learn.....

[HubbysPartner]

So far we only had fluid in the tub once.  It didn't stop treatment, we found it when we were emptying the sak.  Hopefully, we won't have that happen.   

[Malibu]

We haven't had fluid in the tub yet but when I started to drain the tub yesterday I thought about the alarm.

When we were priming we had a red 30 yesterday.  Wierd.  I hit stop and learned how to do the 4 minute reprime after you enter 23! :O)  The tx was uneventful after that.