written on August 27, 2014
Had to come in at 5 am for dialysis this morning. The kids’ daycare is closed the rest of the week so I’m in charge of taking care of them. I figure it’s easier to get dialysis out of the way rather than trying to find someone to work all day for the next 3 days. Plus, this gives me an opportunity to be a stay-at-home dad. I just hope I can find things to do with them for all 3 days. If we have to just sit at home, I think I’ll go a little crazy.
Today’s a weird dialysis day – I’ve been stuffed up ever since I got here. I’ve never had a stuffy nose during dialysis before. Actually, in the last two weeks I kept feeling like I was getting a head cold, then I dialyzed and I felt better. Clearly the dialysis is getting rid of something in my blood.
But what is causing this stuffiness? Is this another side effect that is just starting to appear? My blood pressure is currently 184/105 – is this some late onset reaction to the BP being high?
My doctor prescribed another medication for me to try – Clonidine, which is a blood pressure pill that works in the brain to lower the BP. I’ve been wary of taking this one, mostly because I don’t know what else it can do to me neurologically speaking. A few years ago a psychiatrist I went to recommended it for the neck tick I have (anyone who knows me remember that annoying thing? Well, it turns out it’s most likely a mild form of Tourette’s Syndrome that I’ve had since I was a child. The only drugs I can take for it, according to the psychiatrist, are Parkinson’s drugs, but unfortunately most of those would make my ticks worse over time. So clonidine was out). And now Clonidine is back in, because it’s what the dialysis center and the ER give as a first-line defense against high blood pressure.
When I was here on Monday, I ended dialysis with my blood pressure at 204/115. This concerned all of the staff, and they made me take a clonidine and wait 15 minutes to see if it would come down. Unfortunately, it did not. It was 204/108 when I left, even though they wanted me to sit down and wait another half hour. I had to go pick up the kids from daycare, so I just left. I had a mild migraine the rest of the night – thankfully it never got too painful. It made me realize I’m getting used to the mild migraines. I’m actually functional if the migraine is mild enough. How sad is that?
As I’m sitting here, I can feel the beginnings of a migraine in the back of my head. It’s not bad yet, but I can tell there will be one by the time I’m done. I weighed 78.6 kilos when I came in – I asked them to take no more than .5 liters off of me – we’ll see where I end up. I know I’m retaining some fluid though – my shoes were tight when I put them on this morning. I love all these changes to my body since the renal failure!
The machine just took my blood pressure again – 179/105. That’s pretty much my norm now. It would be so nice if we could get that under control – I’m definitely thinking the high blood pressure is what’s causing the migraines. So what’s causing the high blood pressure? I’m still looking for that answer. I hope I can find it soon.