Yesterday evening when I was ready to hook up I noticed a small amount of blood on my barrier after I had connected. At first I thought I hadn’t connected the bloodlines correctly and there was a tiny leak. After inspection it was really a tiny nick in the small lines coming out from my chest. Luckily a nurse at my training unit had talked about a patient that had a broken clamp on a cathater and how they had fixed it. So, I got out my dremal tool, (she didn’t suggest this but I could see the advantage over whittling with a knife) cut off one of the larger clamps from the bloodlines, dremalled the hole to fit over the ends and body of my cathetar, sterilized the whole mess, and safely clamped above the tiny hole. This morning I’ll be getting a new cath and all problems resolved safe and sound. Just a little helpful hint if you find yourself in this situation. gloria 
Today started out very good. I went to the surgicenter on orders from the neph on call last night and got in right away. They didn’t have to replace my whole cath. They just snipped off the bad part of the line coming from my chest and put on a new unit. Here comes the trouble, when I tried to dialyse this evening it became obvious fairly soon that the venus line was clotting off. After trying all the usual remedies I called Christina the nurse on call. She suggested reversing the lines and unfortunately that didn’t work either so I’ll be off to Davita Home hemo tomarrow for some actavace.
One thing I would like to add, Jerry Bell, the manager at my unit frequents this site. I would like to welcome him to come out and post and add the knowledge that he has obtained in all his years in dialysis. 
I may need to make an appology to him as I didn’t call Davita when the initial problem occured. I called the neph on duty and it didn’t cross my mind to call the unit. I got a call from the charge nurse Christina asking what was going on after Jerry read my post. This is an area that is confusing to me about who to call for what. Jerry please post and let us know what is the protocol in these issues.
One thing for sure, nothing beats home hemo. The more we know what is expected of us the better we can do. I haven’t felt this good in years and I certainly would not do anything that would jeopardize my privlage to do home hemo. AZgloria
Dear Gloria,
I’m sorry to hear you had such a hard time.
I remember once when Michael was on PD, we were wandering around at the mall, and all of a sudden we realized the front of his shirt was wet. Turns out the connector set at the end of his catheter had literally fallen off and he was leaking dialysiate like crazy! Luckily, our training nurse at the time had told us to always have a clamp with us, so I had one in my purse which we used immediately. Of course, he still had to have a dose of antibiotics, but it could have been a lot worse.
I was going to mention, in case it ever happens again and you don’t have time to “re-engineer” a new clamp, you could always use one of the blue scissor hemostat clamps until you could get help.
Anyway, I hope the Activase works like a charm for you. As always, you’re in my thoughts and prayers.
Deb
AZGloria,
No need to apologize, you solved the problem correctly. You needed a clamp above the leak and used the blue plastic line clamp until you devised an alternative. The existing catheter clamp could not be moved past/above the line extension connector so you improvised. Great thinking!
As far as protocol: HHD patients need to keep their on-call nurse ‘in the loop’ so they can advise or plan for follow up. Perhaps we could have anticipated the flow problem, advised you to stop by the clinic after the revision, and verified good flows.
All in all, I would hire you to be my personal HHD care giver anytime.
jbell