Dialysis Treatment

[ripgrandpa81]

I was hoping someone could help me. My grandpa passed this past November and one of the things that caused it was Kidney Failure. So for my English class we had to do a research paper and I wanted to know more about it so I was hoping you guys might be able to help me out on telling me about dialysis.

I'm trying to explain what happens when you go for your treatment. Do you think you could explain to me all of what goes on?
Thanks for your help!

[Ang]

basically  when  you go  to  dialysis,  you  are  getting  your  blood  cleaned

the  machine  is  taking  over  the  functions  of  your  kidney,the  norm  is  about  4  hour  treatment,when  you  do  get  there  evrybody  does  different  things.

laptop,tv,ipod,sleep  ,  chat,puzzles.

waiting  for  a transplant

[RichardMEL]

I'm sorry you lost your grandpa to Kidney Failure. That sucks!

As Ang said the basic idea is that dialysis replaces the function of the kidneys - and their job is to clean the blood and remove all the toxins out (which then come out in your urine). Because people on dialysis tend to have this process say 12-15 hours a week, rather than 24/7 for normal people only a certain amount of the bad stuff is removed and thus this causes all kinds of other issues for kidney failure processes.

In some more mundane kind of detail, I can talk about hemodialysis, which is the form of dialysis a lot of people use (as opposed to PD which is quite different). Anyway when we go in first we wash our access sites and weigh. Weighing in is very important because it is the basic indication of how much fluid we have put on (or retained) from the previous session. Because the kidneys aren't working as well as normal there's not a lot of passing of excess fluids out via urine so that is an issue, and one of the things dialysis also does apart from the dry clean of the blood is to take out that excess fluid (too much fluid is damaging for the heart and lungs). So you weigh in and then are put on the machine. That basically means hooking you up - involving two needles stuck in the access - one needle takes your blood out, and sends it through the artificial kidney in the machine (the dialyzer) and then sends it back to you via the second needle so that it goes off around the body. During any one moment there is usually around 200-300ml of blood outside of your body in the lines and being cleaned, while over the course of a session maybe 80 litres of blood are processed, or all the blood in your body goes around the machine say 10 or so times.

So you sit there and try to amuse yourself while the machine whirrs and does its thing and hopefully doesn't have a problem and alarm (oooh lots of pretty flashing red lights and a not so nice noise!) and when it's time to finish up (HOORAY!) you're disconnected, the needles removed (and you wait for the needle sites to clot so you don't walk out and bleed all over the place!) and you weigh again to confirm how much fluid's been taken off... then you can escape and look forward to the next session WOO HOO!!!

ANyway hope that helps a little bit. Let us know if you need anything else!

[paris]

I am sorry about your Grandpa.  Ang and Richard have explained dialysis very well.  I hope you get a good mark on your paper.  Let us know how you do.  And if you have more questions, we will be glad to help you.


Also, if you go to the Introduction thread and introduce yourself, you will probably get even more responses.  Let us know more about you!  Thanks

paris, Moderator

[ripgrandpa81]

Thank you guys sooo much. You just helped me a lot with understanding what goes on so thank you! 

[Jess21]

So you sit there and try to amuse yourself while the machine whirrs and does its thing and hopefully doesn't have a problem and alarm (oooh lots of pretty flashing red lights and a not so nice noise!)

It should play a song..lol

then you can escape and look forward to the next session WOO HOO!!!

you sound so excited, RM.  LOL "Things to do during dialysis" should include  yelling WOO HOO on your way into treatment, see what looks you get.    **wait, nurse, where did you get that tranquilizer gun?!?***