Bob's Blog 5-3-14: Home D (No, Not Demolition)

Bob Here.

It continues to amaze the people who know me best that somebody with a high degree of medical knowledge actually allowed me to take on the task of being responsible for my own dialysis treatments at home.

Now, as far as I know, my group of familiar cohorts probably think that watching me actually set up a complex dialysis machine is akin to watching The Marx Brothers, The Keystone Cops, or, for that matter, even The Three Stooges.

And, I should add, their skepticism would be pretty well justified.

Of course, in any numerical matter, I'd put my abilities up against just about anyone. As long as they're not some child prodigy genius with an IQ equal to their zip code and who got a college degree at five years old. Otherwise, give me a calculator and a spreadsheet and I can conquer the world.

On another front, however, I'm one of those people who you might politely call "technically inept."

Of course, if you weren't being so polite, you might say that when it comes to any type of machinery, electronics, appliances, household items, or building projects, I'm just a disaster waiting in the wings to happen.

The simplest of tasks can go bad in my hands. One time, I tried to change out a fuse in my basement and almost burned my house down.

And I can cause a computer to malfunction just by going near it.

In my defense, I pointed all these factors out to my nephrologist who was overseeing my in-center treatments way back when, but he still insisted that I was an outstanding candidate for switching to home.

My wife, who was destined to be my training and treatment partner, asked the doc if there was any kind of interaction with machinery, or anything remotely technical involved with doing home treatments.

"Well, yes," said the doctor. "You have to setup the machine, prime the lines, and be responsible for putting your own needles in."

She looked like she was going to faint.

"You don't understand," she said in a hushed voice. "The handyman who works on our house has a cottage in the Bahamas because of him. Every time he starts working in the yard, the neighbors pull their children off the street. I had to hide his tools from him so we wouldn't have to take out a second mortgage..."

"Okay," I broke in. "I think he gets the point."

The doctor just laughed and assured us that he had patients worse off than us who thrived doing home dialysis.

My wife just snorted in derision. "You don't know who you're dealing with here," she said.

During our subsequent training, she was just about ready to hit the doc with a big, fat 'I told you so.'

I know I've conveyed the story before, but as a synopsis, my training resulted in near destruction of the dialysis machine, flooding out the training center (several times), and the training nurse almost herniating herself with laughter at my efforts.

And, while all this was happening, the wife was just staying as far away from me as she could get without needing a foreign visa, all the while, nodding her head, muttering, "Uh huh. Uh huh. Just like I thought."

To this day, whenever we show somebody our home setup, they are amazed that I'm a part of the process.

"You let him near this machine??" one such person asked in our previous home.

"Yes," said the wife. "He actually does most of the setup."

The guy just looked incredulous. "No, seriously..." he said.

The guy was probably thinking back to the time I went to install a basketball hoop on my garage.

It was like a big ceremony in our neighborhood. I had been driving everybody crazy, because all I talked about was getting a hoop setup. People who lived around us were probably thanking their lucky stars that I had finally purchased a backboard, and therefore could now shut up about it.

So, with many of our friends watching, I made a big deal of climbing up the ladder to bang in the first nail. I made believe I was announcing the occasion on TV.

"And he's going up. This is it folks. The first nail will soon be in place in the historic Northam hoop setup..." And on and on like that.

Everyone seemed to be getting a kick out of it.

Except, of course, my wife, who was just standing there cringing with embarrassment.

So, I got to the top of the ladder and was ready to nail a two-by-four into the wall, the backboard was going to attach to the wood.

I held up the nail for everyone to see, continuing the dramatic process.

"Here we go!" I said.

Then with the first mighty swing, I proceeded to miss the nail completely and smash the hammer into my thumb.

Needless to say, the big ceremony was somewhat disrupted when I practically fell off the ladder and rolled around on the ground, spewing out every swear word I could think of and some that I was just making up.

Most people didn't know how to react, but a couple of friends came over to see if I would survive. I looked over at the wife and she was just rolling her eyes.

Anyway, the guy who was looking at our dialysis setup was witness to this little fiasco, so you can kind of understand why he was somewhat leery of me being responsible for setting up this machine with my life on the line.

He was at least trying to be tactful when he asked, "Is that such a great idea? I mean, letting him near machinery? Isn't it a little...I don't know...dangerous?"

I just laughed a little, but I certainly understood his concerns. And, it turns out, they were shared by many of my family and friends.

I have to constantly assure people in my life that I'm doing pretty well with the home treatments. However, I should probably think of a better way to answer their well-intentioned questions than to hold out my arms and say, "Hey, I'm still kickin', ain't I?"

And while the great majority of my treatments go by without a hitch, there are still instances when my old stumblebum self rears his ugly head.

During one treatment setup, I put the cartridge in the dialysis machine, had it all hooked up to the saline, then realized I had forgotten to turn the dialyzer on. I tried turning it on at that point, but the process was out of sequence and all kinds of alarms started ringing.

"What did you do now?" asked the wife.

Well, we tried just about everything, but in the long run, we had to scrap the cartridge, turn everything off and start again.

So, I loaded another cartridge, then it came time to "snap and tap." It's a process to get the excess air out of the dialysis lines. Everything was going okay, but when I got to the end of the venous line, I had to twist the tube some to tap away a stray air bubble.

"Be careful you don't twist that line too hard," said the wife. "If it comes undone, we'll be swimming in saline and dialysate."

I did my best to look offended. "Hey," I said, once again adding a dramatic flair. "You are looking at the snap-and-tap king here. I am to snap-and-tap what Da Vinci is to painting, what Plato is to philosophy, what...what Subway is to sandwiches."

"Oh boy. Just be careful, willya?"

I snorted, turned back to my setup, twisted the line a little more, and watched with horror as the line came undone and fluid started pouring out all over the floor.

Our reactions would have made the Keystone Cops proud. It was barely controlled bedlam.

After we stopped the waterfall from flowing, the wife looked at me sweetly and said, "So, after we mop up, shall we try again? Maybe the third time will be a charm."

But aside from the occasional disaster, most treatments have gone pretty well. In fact, my overall success with such a complex piece of machinery has emboldened me to take a crack at some work around the house that I would normally hire out in the interest of self-preservation.

One recent Saturday, when the wife was out playing tennis, I decided to work on the lawn and garden around our current abode.

A couple of hours later, she returned home, pulled around the corner and was greeted by the sight of me walking up the driveway covered with mud from head to toe.

She just got out of the car, shook her head, said, "I don't want to know," and went into the house.

See? Sometimes not knowing can be pure bliss.

Thanks for reading. Take care.