My husband is one temporary HD while he had some surgical work on his PD catheter. This is not the first time he has been on HD temporarily. Several weeks ago after he had been dialized for about an hour he began to shake with the chills and then his tempertature went up to 103 F. They thought he may have had an infection but nothing showed up. Now almost everytime he has HD he gets similar symptoms. Not quite so severe as the first time but he gets the chills and his temperature rises about 5-6F. This last for about 12 hours and then he starts to get better.
Has anyone else experienced this and if so why. What causes this?
Some of those dialysis centres seem a little clueless sometimes. Some possibilities could be allergy to any of the dialysis tubing, the dialyzer or the chemical used to sterilize the dialyzer. There are special dialyzers that are sterilized by electron beam. Could be intolerance to heparin. I know a few people in my dialysis centre days who had a standing order for a shot of Benadryl at the start of every single treatment, because nothing else could be changed and they still had a reaction like this. They liked it because it made them sleep through the whole treatment 
My dialyzer eventually had to be changed. They don’t like to do this unless it’s absolutely necessary, because these cost more. It made me itch all over.
Pierre
Don’t know whether this is relevant but my machine has my body temp set at 36 degrees C. I find this makes me shiver and feel quite cold( worse in air conditioning). Even a warm spread does nothing. If I raise it manually to to 36.5C these symptoms don’t usually occur. Was told everyone is slightly different.
Cheers
I’d have cultures done again for infection. My father was cultured 3 times over 10 days before his infection showed up in the cultures. He was home got fevers and chills had a culture done it showed nothing. 2 days later he got even sicker fever went higher went to the hospital had cultures done it showed nothing. Came home got worse again went back to the hospital and finally the 3rd culture showed the infection.
[Marty writes:
quote]I’d have cultures done again for infection. My father was cultured 3 times over 10 days before his infection showed up in the cultures. He was home got fevers and chills had a culture done it showed nothing. 2 days later he got even sicker fever went higher went to the hospital had cultures done it showed nothing. Came home got worse again went back to the hospital and finally the 3rd culture showed the infection[/quote].
What did the medical people say about this? Did they know to keep taking cultures or was that your decision? How was it finally treated?
The Nephrologist kept ordering the cultures. It was obviously something was going on and after sending dad home from the hospital once and having to go back they kept at it.
His nephrologist was doing the right thing that needs to be done in cases like this. Infections can be deadly, but they aren’t always right there on the surface. They can be hard to find. Dialysis patients don’t die from the incomforts they can experience on dialysis, but they do die from infections.
Pierre