Bob's Blog 10-1-14: Bad Patient

(Note: Due to a scheduling conflict, Bob's Blog has posted a few days early this month.)

Bob Here.

Dialysis is a life-saving treatment and, despite the lifestyle issues it can cause, we patients are lucky to have it.

As we say, it "beats the alternative."

However, when I look back to when I first started the Big D about a quarter of a century ago, (there were some 17 years with a working transplant in there) it's really a wonder that some member of the hospital staff didn't stamp 'REJECT' on my forehead and open one of those trap doors underneath my chair so that I would never be seen or heard from again.

To say that I didn't immediately adjust very well to starting on a dialysis regimen is being way too kind.

I actually started being difficult before I even had my first treatment.

When I first went into the hospital, I didn't know what was wrong, but I was a pretty sick dude. My creatinine was up in the stratosphere and shortly after being admitted uremia started affecting my brain.

Next thing I knew, I was laying in a hospital bed hooked up to this gigantic machine through a catheter in my chest. I slowly started coming out of the uremic fog as they were treating me every day for seemingly very long periods of time.

After a couple of days, I felt pretty much back to normal mentally, which turned out to be a good news-bad news situation for the staff. I did notice that the nurses all had big smiles when they came to tend to me, which I attributed to my getting better.

But, once the doctor determined that he could talk to me in some semblance of a normal conversation, he told me a number of interesting aspects of my transition to a dialysis patient.

First, he said that I had waited way too long to come in and that by being a typical stubborn male, I had almost bought my one-way train ticket to that big beer and pizza joint in the sky.

Now, though I had clearly lost track of time while I was checked out on the rationality plateau, I thought that I had just been laying there quietly in a semi-vegitative state during my convalescence.

But noooo...

The doc was also good enough to inform me that while I was out-of-it, I had been quite the conversationalist.

He told me that I had taken to calling nurses who were passing by over to my bunk and complimenting them on, shall we say, their "anatomical features."

And, if that wasn't cringe-worthy enough, he said with a smile that the staff had established a scorecard on who received the most rude comments every day.

At this point, he could see that I wanted to crawl under my bed and hide.

He said, "No, don't worry about it. Everybody knows that you weren't in your right mind."

Just the same, I made it a point to apologize profusely to every nurse who came in. Most of them just laughed it off, but I still felt about an inch tall.

Anyway, they filled me in about kidney failure and how I was going to need treatment several times per week.

"How long are the treatments?" I asked the doctor, expecting to hear something like 30 minutes, an hour tops.

"Oh," he answered very casually, "I think we'll start you off at four hours. Then we'll make an adjustment down the road."

I was just staring at him in disbelief.

Then I laughed. "Hah. When you said four hours, you were talking about the total for the week, right? Phew, at first, I thought you meant four hours per treatment. What a total dweeb I am. Ha Ha. My thinking must still be off..."

"No. It is four hours per treatment," he said.

Dead silence.

"Did one of my airhead friends put you up to this?" I asked. "You're kidding about four hours per treatment, right? I mean, how many treatments per week are we talking about?"

"Well, we'll start you off at three, but again, there may be an adjustment down the road."

I then went on a diatribe about having way better things to do than be hooked up to this mechanical vampire three times per week for four hours per pop. And I'm afraid I might have gotten a bit personal in my critique of his diagnosis, saying that he wasn't fit to treat my cat; asking things like, what did he do, get his medical degree out of a Cracker Jacks box or what?; and even going after his appearance, calling him a fat, bald, ugly old man who had the IQ of a powdered donut.

Later I thought, good job Bob. You've already made friends with all the nurses, now you're pissing the doctor off too.

To his credit, the doc just stood there patiently waiting for me to run out of steam, which of course I eventually did.

He said, "I'll come back later so we can talk some more."

With one last burst of venom, I said something like, "You better call first. I might not be in."

He gave a little snort and walked out.

Now, I'm sure I wasn't the first new dialysis patient to tee off upon being given the bad news. And they at least had to give me some points for consistency, I was nasty to everybody who came in after that, and things got worse as I learned more about what I was up against.

Later that day, an unsuspecting young tech came wheeling the dialysis machine in to start my next treatment. It was the first one I had where I was conscious and with it the whole time.

"What's this crap about four hours??" I yelled.

She was really cool. She took my tirade in complete stride.

"Well good afternoon. Nice to see you too," she said sweetly.

I grumbled something incoherent in response and was pretty quiet while she started the treatment going.

Then, after we had been underway for a few minutes, she said, "I treated you the other day, but I doubt you'd remember. You were really out of it. You didn't say too much. Although you did ask if it hurt when I fell down from heaven and told me that I must be a pirate because I have a great booty."

I must have turned all shades of red. "Oh, hey I'm really sorry about that..."

She laughed. "Don't worry about it. I figured you were either in a total uremic state, or you were just a jerk."

"Or, maybe both hah ha ha..."

She laughed again. "Yes. Maybe both."

Then we were quiet for a while longer. As it started to sink in what I was up against, my bad mood returned.

She said, "Do you want to learn more about the dialysis machine?"

I said, "I'd rather have my wisdom teeth pulled out through my ear than learn more about this *#@#** machine."

Again, she was not taken aback at all. "Well, I'll see if I can arrange the surgery. In the meantime though, you'll be spending a lot of time on the machine so it would behoove you to understand it a little better."

"The only thing I want to know is whether it's breakable if you push it down the stairs."

"Well, just make sure you're unhooked first before you try it out."

Later, the dietician came in and started describing my newly limited choice of nutrients, things that had to be restricted, fluid limits, and other fun subjects, a conversation that I was clearly not ready for.

About ten minutes into her lesson, I pretended to fall asleep.

At first, she just kept on talking. Then I added some loud phony snoring to the mix. Although she wasn't buying that I was really sleeping, she got up and left saying she would come back later at the door.

I thought, I sure do have a lot of people coming back later.

A couple of days hence, after another annoying meeting with the dietician, I snuck out of the hospital and hit the pizza place across the street, an episode that I have written about previously and that further endeared me to the staff.

Needless to say, I don't think any tears were shed when I was finally able to check out and start in-center hemo treatments. I will say that once I had adjusted to my reality, I tried to make up for my bad behavior and probably kept some members of the hospital staff from carrying out their plans to have me killed.

I tried to butter up the doctor I had mistreated with a good old lawyer joke, figuring that hey, everybody like lawyer jokes right?

"Hey doc, you know why most doctors love operating on lawyers?" I asked.

He looked at me a little warily, probably wondering if I was just setting him up for another shot. "No why?" he said.

"Because they have no heart, they have no guts, and the head and the ass are interchangeable. Ha ha ha..."

He laughed a little, but I could tell I still wasn't exactly his favorite person.

Now, I know what you're all out there thinking. You're thinking, "How could someone so pleasant, kind, and charming have misbehaved so badly," right?

What can I say? The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Thanks for reading. Take care.