written on September 8, 2014
In addition to a new dialysis center, I also switched to a new nephrologist. Wow, is that a breath of fresh air.
I brought in my continued disability claim form and asked if he would fill it out while he was on rounds in the center today. And he did! He actually took 5 minutes and filled the whole thing out, made a copy of it for his records and then handed it back to me to mail in. I’m still stunned. Considering it took 11 weeks for my last doctor to get his portion of the initial claim filled out, mailed in and signed (you can read all about it in the archives – such a stressful situation over the summer), this is truly a wonderful day.
And, in addition to having the form filled out, I’ve been dialyzing for 3 hours so far and no headache yet. Maybe I won’t get one?
I’ve had a bunch of other issues today – I came in with blood in the catheter line. I didn’t think that was good, but the nurse assured me it’s just a clot in the line. She cleaned it out when I got here, but during the session I keep having problems with my venous and arterial pressures on the line. She thinks there’s a clot somewhere further down the line (the part inside of me). They gave me some heparin (blood thinner) and I’ve been fine since. I’ve only got four weeks until the surgery – I really hope this catheter can make it. I would really hate to have to go through another catheter implant surgery.
My blood pressure has been higher than normal today (190’s over 100’s), but that’s because I haven’t taken my blood pressure meds yet. My new doctor suggested I try waiting until after dialysis because he thinks some of the meds get cleaned out during dialysis. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I figure it’s worth trying.
Wednesday I have to dialyze at 5:30 am because I have a meeting with the hypertension unit at Cedars in the afternoon. We’ll see what they have to say.
I talked to my nurse coordinator this morning and she thinks talking to the hypertension team is great. She’s optimistic that they’ll be able to continue helping me get the blood pressure down to normal. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. As long as they don’t want me to keep taking clonidine. I stopped taking it Friday since the minoxidil is supposed to replace it. This is the first morning I didn’t wake up with a crazy dry throat or a horrible taste in my mouth. So as long as I don’t need the clonidine, the better off I’ll be.
So far this week is starting off well, although I had some crazy diarrhea this morning. I hope that’s gone now. Such a bad start to the day, but the rest of it has been going well!
Finally, I feel like I’m having a good dialysis day. Yay! Maybe I can have a few more of these before the transplant. Wouldn’t that be nice?