The Mother of All Alarms

After you've been on dialysis for a REALLY long time, you start to think that you've seen it all.

(And, perhaps, know it all, although in my case, this trait was something I was born with.)

But, not so bison breath...

The other day we got an alarm on our home machine that we had never seen before, and despite fighting off the inevitable urge to freak out, I'd say our response was pretty close to panic territory.

Most alarms that take place during a home treatment have the good grace to occur right when you're starting out. The most common ones are for air in one of your lines, or a low venous pressure. And despite sounding somewhat ominous, these are generally correctable without having to call 911.

And they happen with enough frequency that you have the alarm code that pops up on the machine's readout memorized, so you instantly know what is happening and what to do about it without having to page through the operating manual, which, if laid sideways in front of a window would blot out the sun.

This time, we were minding our own business, about in the middle of our treatment and everything seemed to be hunky dory. Then, out of nowhere, the alarm from hell started ringing.

The readout said 720, and, needless to say, neither one of us had ever seen it before. And when I say it rang, I mean it kept on ringing ceaselessly. (Most alarms ring twice and give you a chance to address it before ringing again.) Even our old failsafe, the wonderful 'Mute' button didn't work. This infernal thing just kept on ringing, refusing to be muted.

My wife and I both looked at each other and said, in perfect unison, "What do we do now??" a phrase, by the way, that is rarely good to hear when you're treating at home.

So, we were rifling through the interminable manual and calling NextStage at the same time. Meanwhile the bell continued to ring in our ears.

Our setup is close to a window with a beautiful ocean view, but that also faces out onto our driveway. Among the alternatives we were considering was just giving the machine a little nudge and taking pleasure in watching it splatter out onto the pavement. Hey, at least the bell would stop ringing.

But we were able to resist that urge and went through the phone selections for NextStage, finally reaching a person.

Turns out, a 720 alarm means the door to your machine might not be closed all the way. They told us to push down on the arm, turn the machine off and turn it on again. In the middle of treatment. Didn't sound like a great alternative to me.

But we did it, the alarm went off and we were able to resume our session. I have to admit, though that I heard imaginary bells ringing in my ear for the rest of the day.

Now, I'm sure that I closed the door completely during setup, so we asked our Nextstage savior what would cause the alarm. He said that sometimes the machine might get jarred or shaken and the door might come loose. We told him that the only things that were shaking were us when we got a strange alarm that we couldn't shut off. We still have no idea why this alarm sounded.

Anyway, that's a solution to a 720 alarm that doesn’t involve intentional destruction of your machine.

Live and learn.