written on August 29, 2014
Today is another dialysis day at 5 am. I have to say I really hate dialyzing at 5 am. On one hand, it’s nice because I get my days back. But I never sleep well the night before – and it’s not insomnia related. It’s anxiety, because I’m always afraid I’m going to sleep through the alarm and miss the session. So I wake up about 1:30 or 2 and never really get back to sleep. I just toss and turn, waiting for the alarm to go off. Normally I get up a few minutes before the alarm goes off, to make sure I don’t wake my wife. Hopefully today will be the last day I have to be here at 5 am (the daycare my kids go to is closed this week, so I’m taking care of the kids everyday and I can’t bring them to dialysis with me).
Driving in this morning I could feel the beginnings of a migraine. Not good. I think it’s my body getting accustomed to having a migraine every time I dialyze. Wow. Have the migraines become a habit for me? Has my body become so accustomed to them, and to the high blood pressure, that I’m now anticipating them? I really hope not.
I just met with the doctor here at the new dialysis center who will be taking care of me. I’ve scheduled an appointment to see him Tuesday afternoon and he told me he wants to discuss other treatment options for migraines, primarily trying to find a prophylactic medication that I could possibly take the night before to prevent them from starting in the first place. Um, okay, sign me up! Maybe he’ll be able to give me other options for controlling the blood pressure also. I really hope so.
But in case he can’t, I’ve made an appointment to see a cardiologist at Cedars - someone who works with the transplant center. It’s scheduled for September 10, but it might happen later today. I don’t know if a cardiologist will have any suggestions, but since the three nephrologists I’ve talked to haven’t been able to control it, I’m hoping a cardiologist can offer some kind of new insights.
My nurse at Cedars gave me the referral to the cardiologist – she’s also going to ask one of the transplant surgeons if they have any suggestions as to how to control my blood pressure. One of these doctors should know about something we haven’t tried yet, something that will definitely help. This is just not a good way to live. And it’s starting to really affect me. Poor sleeping, loss of appetite, general feeling of malaise, irritability, fatigue. I think I can suck it up until the transplant, but there’s also the reality that the transplant won’t happen with the high blood pressure. I have to get it under control somehow. There’s only 4 weeks left; the clock is ticking. And this is one alarm I can’t afford to miss.