I’ve just joined the forum and I’m the primary support for my mother who is booked for her catheter insertion on May 23rd. Dialysis is a new world for us but just another step down a road of medical dramas including breast cancer and Type 2 diabetes. The decision to go with CAPD was difficult for my mother who wanted the defer any and all decisions to the doctors. In the end I think we led her to the CAPD and that makes me nervous.
I live across town (30 minutes in light traffic) and work and have kids (9 & 7) but I’m the only family around so I’ll be doing the training and acting as support person. Her friends are amazing but better in acute situations than everyday help.
Hopefully this forum will be a source of support for me as I help my Mum through this
Welcome to Home Dialysis Central. We have a number of support partners who come here, as well as folks on dialysis, and we try our best to make everyone comfortable. Your mom is lucky to have you doing research and finding information for her. PD is a great first tratment, and is generally easy to learn and to do and will help her maintain her energy levels without the “swings” of 3x/week hemo. But it’s still an adjustment, and having you for support will be a big help for her. Feel free to ask questions or to search the threads in this Board–many topics come up again and again. Good luck!
Some patients like CAPD because they do 4-5 exchanges of dialysis solution every day and it leaves their nights free. Other like CCPD because they do it overnight while sleeping using a machine and it leaves their days free. You might want to look at the comparison chart of the 5 types of home dialysis from the home page. In most cases, patients can choose either CAPD and CCPD. Some patients do CCPD when at home and CAPD when traveling.
It will be important for your mother to learn as much as she can about her illness and treatment and to participate actively in her care rather than deferring to others. One thing to consider is that if she doesn’t make your own decisions, then she can always blame someone else if that decision turns out to not be the right one. I’d strongly encourage you to help her develop the confidence to make her own decisions. If she’s never made decisions for herself in the past, it will require more baby steps to get there, but if she has been a decisive person in the past, she just needs to know that she has the ability to draw on that quality again.
