DIE-alysis ever notice that?

[Epoman]

Ever notice how dialysis sounds like DIE-lysis?  That messes with your head, every time you say dialysis it sounds like your saying DIE.

Sorry just a little venting. But hey that's what this site is all about. Let me know what you think.

[LifeOnHold]

Yes, I sure have noticed that... a few years ago I wrote a short article, "Let's get the 'Die' out of dialysis" for AuthorsDen   

Hearing the word 'Die-alysis' several thousand times a month can get to anyone!

[Epoman]

Yes, I sure have noticed that... a few years ago I wrote a short article, "Let's get the 'Die' out of dialysis" for AuthorsDen   

Hearing the word 'Die-alysis' several thousand times a month can get to anyone!

  I knew I wasn't alone. Man I would love to read your article. How about posting it here. 

[Epoman]

Yes, I sure have noticed that... a few years ago I wrote a short article, "Let's get the 'Die' out of dialysis" for AuthorsDen   

Hearing the word 'Die-alysis' several thousand times a month can get to anyone!

  I knew I wasn't alone. Man I would love to read your article. How about posting it here. 

Hey what ever happen to that article? Can you post it here?

[LifeOnHold]

I can't find that article anywhere-- I will have to rewrite it.  But the gist of it was that hearing the word "DIE-alysis" a couple hundred times a week eventually gets to people, and the words 'treatment' and 'run' are much less stressful on patients.  My unit uses the alternative words whenever possible... the only nurse who still says "dialysis" is Spanish, so with her accent it comes out "DEE-AL-e-sis"...  no "DIE" in there! 

[oldborris]

No, I haven't.  And now that you have brought it to my attention, I'm still not bothered.  Anyone that is bothered by it seems, to me, to be a trifle over-sensitive.  Now what I do dislike, but in an amused, detached sort of  way, is the phrase End Stage Renal Failure.  What's end stage about it?  I see it Beginning of New Stage of Life Renal Failure

[LifeOnHold]

I think you'd be better off at Dialysis Online... we're here to VENT!   

[Epoman]

I think you'd be better off at Dialysis Online... we're here to VENT!   

Well I'm glad someone said it I have read "oldborris" posts and I think he needs to start his own site called "ILoveDialysis.com"
But we still welcome you "oldborris" You're just a tad too happy for this place.

[LifeOnHold]

Oldborris is in his 80's... it's a lot harder adjust to dialysis when it hits you just as you're starting out in life.  I started dialysis at age 23, and sure didn't think it was a 'new start in life!'  I never even started the life I already had before it got yanked away from me.

Elderly people don't have to put up with dialysis for as long as younger people have to-- which is why younger people hate it more. 

[Epoman]

Oldborris is in his 80's... it's a lot harder adjust to dialysis when it hits you just as you're starting out in life.  I started dialysis at age 23, and sure didn't think it was a 'new start in life!'  I never even started the life I already had before it got yanked away from me.

Elderly people don't have to put up with dialysis for as long as younger people have to-- which is why younger people hate it more. 

I couldn't have said it better myself. you are exactly right. I was 21 when I started and my life had just started in fact I was newly married just under a year. At 80 years old "oldborris" had most likely done everything he had wanted to do in life, and if he hadn't yet well that's his own fault.

I'm not picking on you "olldborris" but "LifeOnHold" has a very valid point and I hope you don't take our comments the wrong way. You have lived a long life and people who start dialysis young in life won't live as long as you have (most of the time).

[oldborris]

I am overcome with remorse to learn that my happiness  [relative, I assure you] is offensive and that it is thought that I am insensitive to the enormous problem that early dialysis presents to young people faced with a virtual lifetime on dialysis interspersed with, if they are lucky, transplants of varying length.  Every time I see  young people on dialysis my  heart bleeds for them and for the tragedy that has affected thier lives and  I consider how [relatively] lucky I am that I did not get renal failoure until I reached 72 and that I had, until then, a great life involving a lot of travel.

While it is true, of course, that v.a.p's [very aged persons] will have to suffer dialysis or the problems of a transplanted kidney for shorter periods than an older person yet it remains true that the closer one is to death the more fiercely one clings to life.  I might well be dead within the next couple of years [and, indeed, fully expect to be: no flowers by request] but you will still be alive, and dialysis or not, life will still be relatively [that word again!] sweet.  Better than being brown bread, anyway.

Even young people can surmount the challenges of dialysis. Professor Robin Eady contracted renal failure as a 21 year old medical student in 1960 at a time when dialysis had just been invented and was not available in the UK and was being introduced in the US in Seattle to which he went.  At that time, with 14 hour sessions, dialyysis really did suck, big time. Continuing his medical studies in US and Canada he returned eventually to the UK where, today, he practices as a professor of dermatology.


But I see that you don't want to know about such positive outcomes so I will remove my beaming smile [slightly twisted now] from your site.

[oldborris]

>>>it is true, of course, that v.a.p's [very aged persons] will have to suffer dialysis or the problems of a transplanted kidney for shorter periods than an older person>>>

Sorry! In the above quote from my last posting please substitute "than a younger person" for the erroneous
"than an older person" which doesn't make sense.  But I'm sure that you noticed that and made your own mental correction.

[Epoman]

I am overcome with remorse to learn that my happiness  [relative, I assure you] is offensive and that it is thought that I am insensitive to the enormous problem that early dialysis presents to young people faced with a virtual lifetime on dialysis interspersed with, if they are lucky, transplants of varying length.  Every time I see  young people on dialysis my  heart bleeds for them and for the tragedy that has affected thier lives and  I consider how [relatively] lucky I am that I did not get renal failoure until I reached 72 and that I had, until then, a great life involving a lot of travel.

While it is true, of course, that v.a.p's [very aged persons] will have to suffer dialysis or the problems of a transplanted kidney for shorter periods than an older person yet it remains true that the closer one is to death the more fiercely one clings to life.  I might well be dead within the next couple of years [and, indeed, fully expect to be: no flowers by request] but you will still be alive, and dialysis or not, life will still be relatively [that word again!] sweet.  Better than being brown bread, anyway.

Even young people can surmount the challenges of dialysis. Professor Robin Eady contracted renal failure as a 21 year old medical student in 1960 at a time when dialysis had just been invented and was not available in the UK and was being introduced in the US in Seattle to which he went.  At that time, with 14 hour sessions, dialyysis really did suck, big time. Continuing his medical studies in US and Canada he returned eventually to the UK where, today, he practices as a professor of dermatology.


But I see that you don't want to know about such positive outcomes so I will remove my beaming smile [slightly twisted now] from your site.

"Oldborris" I do like to hear about positive outcomes and I hope you don't leave this site. The only thing I'm wondering is do you like everything about dialysis? Is there anything that bothers you? workers, centers, diet restrictions, anything? I'm sorry it's just I have met literally hundreds of patients in my time and none of them had such a positive attitude about dialysis as you do.

P.S. I will be sending this reply to your email as well.

[LifeOnHold]

Why would a person who doesn't hate dialysis join a board titled "I hate dialysis?"

I thought being disgruntled was a prerequisite for being a member here!   

[oldborris]

Where did I say that I love dialysis?  I accept it.  I tolerate it.  But, obviously, I don't love it.  I don't even like it.  But I agree totally that my acceptance is due largely to getting it at a stage in life where I have seen many people shuffle off this mortal coil and dialysis has, at least, given me so far an extra nine years of what is still an enjoyable life.  I am cerain that I wouldn't feel nearly so accepting if I were a 20 or 30 year old: I don't know how I would feel - close to despair I would imagine.

But at the moment I have got a lot to be happy about....I've got a nice apartment with the second best view in London, a good retirement pension which will keep me comfortable until I pop my clogs, a very comfortable dialysis unit with a bed, a timeatable that suits me, accesss to the next door kitchen, professional friendly staff, a neph I trust. Needling  doesn't bother me tho' I think that I wouldn't trust myself to do my own needling. I don't have any dietary restrictions; those I was given when I started dialysis I simply ignored except for the 3 big no-no's - bananas, mushrooms and chocolate.  But a few months ago I was advised that my potassium was low and was advised to stuff myself with these usually forbidden fruits. So now I eat anything I want with no problems.

Dialysis wasn't always as comfortable.  Before I wangled a transfer to the semi-private four-bed unit [by exagerating the effect  of my osteoporosis and emphysema] I was in my hospitals general dialysis unit which contained about 30 chairs and which  I hated, hated, hated.  HATED, I TELL YOU, HATED, HATED, HATED. [There, I feel better now]. I hated the uncomfortable chairs from which, in an economy drive, the sheets had recently been removed, I hated the ridiculous 'tables' on which  nothing fitted and everything fell off, I hated the ubiquitous, hard-to-see-even-if-one-wanted-to  mulltiple force-fed t.v. sets tuned at high volume to a half-dozen dumbed down channels from which there was no escape, I hated the  third-world aspect of the unit in which several times I found myself the only indigenous patient in a totally foreign world of non-Englsih speaking Indians and Afro-Caribbeans,  Hindus and Muslims, and Romanian gypsies.  This isn't an expression of racial prejudice; it's just that one does not normally want to feel swamped by non-communicated foreigners in one's own country.  Where I could communicate I made friends with people in all groups, even with a Quar'an-reading Muslim whose lack of English was matched by my lack of Arabic but which did not prevent him from giiving me a lift home, when times co-incided, or my accepting it.  But now that I'm in my own room sharing with an English woman, an Indian Hindu and a Pakistani Muslim and a South African nurse I'm as happy as Larry.

[O in]

Why would a person who doesn't hate dialysis join a board titled "I hate dialysis?"

I thought being disgruntled was a prerequisite for being a member here!

i joined because i wanted to see what sort of persons could be so pi***d off with receiving a life saving treatment
oin

[Epoman]

Why would a person who doesn't hate dialysis join a board titled "I hate dialysis?"

I thought being disgruntled was a prerequisite for being a member here!

i joined because i wanted to see what sort of persons could be so pi***d off with receiving a life saving treatment
oin

It isn't about not appreciating a life saving treatment.  Just because a machine saves my life doesn't mean I can't hate the fact that I have to be on dialysis while assholes that are my age abuse their bodies with drugs and alcohol and are perfectly healthy. In my case I NEVER did any drugs or alcohol and I am the one on dialysis. So try to understand I appreciate the inventor of dialysis but I still hate it.

I'm sure people who have to go through Chemotherapy HATE the procedure even though it is helping them.

Do you understand now?

[Rerun]

We hate dialysis because it inturrupts our freedom.  While I'm tied to a machine 12 hours a week plus down time and recoop time everyone around functions normally.  I know suffering is relevant, and that is why I'm here.  No one around me wants to hear me bitch.  They don't understand.  They would have a hard time just sitting in a chair for 4 hours let alone haveing every drop of blood sucked out and ran througha machine and pumped back in.  For GOD sakes, this is worse torture than putting panties over someone's head in Iraq!

[Epoman]

We hate dialysis because it inturrupts our freedom.  While I'm tied to a machine 12 hours a week plus down time and recoop time everyone around functions normally.  I know suffering is relevant, and that is why I'm here.  No one around me wants to hear me bitch.  They don't understand.  They would have a hard time just sitting in a chair for 4 hours let alone haveing every drop of blood sucked out and ran througha machine and pumped back in.  For GOD sakes, this is worse torture than putting panties over someone's head in Iraq!

Yeap! That is EXACTLY right they DO NOT UNDERSTAND! Healthy people have NO idea the physical and emotional grief we are under. I hate it when people say crap like "Why are you so quiet" or "what's wrong" when they know I just got back from dialysis. I wish I could make them sit in a chair for hours hooked to a machine and not be able to move their arm (I have a lower arm fistula) and have their blood pressure drop and go into dialysis feeling OK and leave feeling like crap.

[LifeOnHold]

And they wonder why there's so many 'noncompliant' patients on dialysis!  You go in feeling ok, and come out feeling like you've just had the crap kicked out of you for 4 hours... it seems like they're trying to kill you, not help you!

Not surprising there's such a high mortality rate-- dialysis is TOUGH on your body, it ain't a 4-hour lounge in a chair!  You have to be tough, mentally and physically, to live any length of time like this.  But healthy people look at you like you're lazy because you 'get to sit down all day.'  In reality, a lot of those same people wouldn't survive dialysis, because they couldn't adapt to the change in body appearance, diet and energy level.  It makes me laugh when diabetic people say rude stuff to me-- hey buddy, you could be sitting next to me in the unit next month if you don't keep your glucose under control.  Everyone is just one medical catastrophe away from being disabled... making light of someone's disability could end up biting you in the ass.

[Marina]

No, I haven't.  And now that you have brought it to my attention, I'm still not bothered.  Anyone that is bothered by it seems, to me, to be a trifle over-sensitive.  Now what I do dislike, but in an amused, detached sort of  way, is the phrase End Stage Renal Failure.  What's end stage about it?  I see it Beginning of New Stage of Life Renal Failure

I  remember  sitting  at  the  Dr.  office  and  she  loves  to dictate  into  her  recorder.  She  started  with "This  is  Dr.___   I'm  here  with  Marina  _____ ,  she  has  no  complains  of 
blah blah blah  and  then  ended  with  ...............Marina  is  suffering  from  END STAGE  RENAL  FAILURE  she's  currently  on stage  4.              The  sound of  that  made  me  feel like  "what  the f*c*         does  that  mean  I'm  dying?            she  did  say  "end  stage"
       Of course  I  shortly  learned  that  in  fact that  was  the  term  for  renal  failure  and   y  function was  below  20%.       At  first  that  scared  the  sh*t  out  of  me.        Now  I  laugh  about  it.            LOL