three holes in bowling ball, an odd dialysis treatment

A little trouble to get started with dialysis treatment using my fistula today: two nurses worked it out though and I ended up with three holes not the usual two.  My pump speed was excellent 420-430 and I cleaned 106 litres.

coming down the pike:

• anigoplasty to fix a narrowing in the fistula
• trip to Toronto, for a final check on my healed heel
• end of August surgery to remove most of my parathyroid glands
• seems we have lost one of our dialysis patient team to home hemodialysis, this program is ramping up in this area of Ontario – I will miss yakking with him in the waiting room

parathyroid removal is common related to hemodialysis

Blackberry tablet camera shots

RIM Blackberry tablet camera shots – watercolour effect-ed by uing the app Pencil Camera

my view of the dialysis clinic during my dialysis treatment and a late night kitchen self-portrait- I was in the kitchen for the strong overhead lighting, not for a midnight snack

hot time in the olde clinic today

temperatures this afternoon were in the 30s, with a higher number for humidex, perhaps 39 degrees Celsius

unfortunately,  the a/c unit for the clinic failed and both our afternoon crew and the morning crew fried

my dialysis is the longest at 4.5 hours, even though I wore shorts and a T-shirt, it was scalding in the dialysis chair, after forty minutes I was wondering if I mght pass out.  One of the nurses went down to the kitchen and came back with a resupply of ice.  I slipped ice chips down the front of my t-shirt, and later poured melted ice-water on to the washcloth that had been trying to cool me off with a dunk in some cold tap water.

The nurses looked pretty limp after the long oven shift, they were there from just before 7 am.

I asked one of the other dialysis patients if he was well done or just medium.

He said, “You can sure stick a fork in me.”

Repairs do not look iminent, apparently several electrical surges did the nasty to the electric motor and so Thursday patients both AM and PM will have a rough time.  The weather is supposed to breal cooler by Friday morning. I sure hope that cooler front does not slow down and arrives as forecast..  I  thought I might pass out or vomit from the heat, but I  dragged through.

There was an a/c problem last year.  The hospital was trumpeting how it balanced its budget.  I guess that didn’ include heavy duty preventive maintenance on that a/c unit, let alone a replacement.

One blessing, the rest of the hospital full mainly of geriatric patients, was a/c cooled all right, so those patients were comfortable.

Miss Bella watches – taken before dialysis

Miss Bella watches

Originally uploaded by William J. Gibson, the Canuckshutterer

It is often difficult to get a good photo of a black cat or dog. You end up with a silhouette. This one of Bella is not bad.

I checked the EXIF data and hmm, i had thought I took this with the external flash attached. But perhaps not. It was taken in summer 2008 when my renal failure was progressing rapidly to the point where I entered the dialysis treatment in November via the crash method. I was in deep denial and fear about the whole thing and had stopped seeing my nephrologist and at that time had no family doctor. One of the blessings of this past year is I finally got a family doctor up here in God’s country.

That denial period was one more example of the stupid moves in my rather silly life. At least when i was suffering from congestive heart failure I managed to summon enough brain cells to walk into Emergency.