I know I'm not the first to post on how bad this week has been. Is it something in the air?
Last Saturday I went to dialysis. The alarms on the machine kept going off all of the time I was there. Right before they pulled the needles out, I noticed a small area near one of the needle sites that looked raised and was blanched/white. It looked like an infiltrated area but it wasn't. I felt for the thrill and couldn't find it.
I even had the nurse use her stethoscope to hear the bruit and she said she thought she heard it. My leg was swollen even after dialysis, which is nothing new for me. Anyway, I left dialysis and went on with my weekend.
Tuesday I showed up for dialysis and got all my stuff unpacked for my treatment (gotta have stuff
). The tech goes to put the needle in and is having trouble getting it in. She tries for another 2 minutes or so and then calls someone else over. The needle is still in my leg (thank God I use lidocaine) and they deduce that my graft is clotted off. My day had not started off well because my daughter had woken up feeling ill and I had to take her to the dr. after dialysis. I had also been super nauseated that morning.
At this point I am so frustrated, angry, and a little scared that I burst out crying.
Everyone was telling me it would be fine and I would be OK. I find out from the nurse that I will have to go to the hospital in Austin where my vascular surgeon practices and have them remove the clot. This will take most of the day. They want me to go straight there from the center but I have to make arrangements for someone to drive me home after the procedure and also for someone to take my daughter to her appt. So I go home to gather up what I will need at the hospital. On the way there I was able to get ahold of a friend and she had no problem with taking me to the hospital and driving me home after the procedure.
We get to the hospital and the clerk at the front desk had me sign in. I told him they were expecting me but I did not have anything scheduled ahead of time. He was aware of that and also remembered my name. I have been there too much if he can remember my name already. So they call me into pre-op and the nurses look at my arms for a good vein to start an IV. I need to say at this point that I still had a bruise on my arm from my venogram 3 weeks ago. It was just starting to fade. They picked the nurse that was the best in starting IV's. She gave it 2 tries and gave up. I just don't have
any good veins anymore.
They had the anesthesiologist come take a look. He looked quickly and didn't see anything so he announces he is going to start one in my neck.
I've had IV's there before and they haven't been too horrible. He gets all set up and starts to go for my neck vein. I suddenly realize he hasn't numbed the area with lidocaine yet and so I ask him for it. He gives this big sigh and he's irritated he has to wait all of 30 seconds for the nurse to get it and for the area to become numb. Finally he states, "you'll feel a little pressure," and sticks the needle in, and out, an back in, and out, and...you get the picture. I moan each time he moves the needle around and I tell him that it's not just pressure but real pain I am feeling. He says, "Oh no it's not. You're just being a baby." This pisses me off and after 4-5 minutes of digging around in my neck, he pulls the needle out and loudly declares that he couldn't get it in because I moved around too much and I would not relax my muscles. Say what?!! I was very careful not too move my upper body at all while he was trying to start the IV in such a tender place.
Now he's even more irritated because he has to try again or they have to take more time to put in a permcath. He goes for the first option in the other side of my neck. So we start all over again on the opposite side. BTW, he doesn't put a bandage on the first place he stuck and so while he is setting up for the second stick, I have blood running down my neck onto the bed. I say something discourteously about it and finally, a nurse puts a bandage on it. He tries again on the other side and he gets it in the vein at last. He has been mumbling under his breath ceaselessly about patients that act like they know more than the doctor. I wanted to hurt the man and if he had been any closer to my stretcher, he would have been singing soprano in the church choir for a change.
"I'm so sorry!!" Now I have a large bruise down the left side of my neck and I'm sure it won't go away any time soon. Later, I heard him whining in the next cubicle about how he was so tired of people complaining and why couldn't they just "suck it up?" I said very loudly to my friend, "I am so tired of doctors who are A__holes."
I didn't hear him anymore that day.
The rest of the surgery went fine and they were able to clear the clot from my graft. It took much longer than expected so I ended up going home around 4:30pm. It made for a really long and tiresome day. I spoke with the dialysis unit on the way home and they scheduled me to come in the next day (not my usual day). That meant I would go 4 days without dialyzing (my last treatment was on Saturday). By the time I weighed in the next day, I had gained 3.9 Kgs since last treatment, 1.6 Kgs of which were just since the day before. I learned that they had given me alot of IV fluids during surgery and my body of course, was retaining all that fluid. Needless to say, they started using heparin again during my treatment (they had stopped it the 3rd week on dialysis because I was taking blood thinners and I kept bleeding after treatment - now I am off all that type of medication except for aspirin). I do
NOT want this to happen again!!! Here's my big finale: I am so tired of everything having to be a fight lately (I am not usually a complainer). It's never just 1 hard thing to deal with - it comes in waves of 2 or 3.
Whew........I'm exhausted.
The lesson I learned is to check my graft for the thrill everyday and to make sure the staff really listen to me when I have a concern. I am not one to exaggerate my complaints and so when I actually do make a fuss about something, it's not usually a small inconvenience. Sorry for whining, guys. I just needed to get that frustration off of my chest.
And my daughter got to see her physician Tuesday afternoon. She has a bad sinus infection and they put her on antibiotics and said she could return to school when she no longer had a fever. That was this morning, which made yesterday interesting because I had to leave her alone while I was at dialysis, not a
big problem since she is 15, but I felt guilty nonetheless.
I hope this weekend is turmoil-free!
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