Happy Anniversary to Me

Discussions for Patients, Family, and Friends HD For Patients
1

Well today marks my first year anniversary of dialysis. One year ago I walked into my clinic for the first time and started, what felt like, an overwhelming task of learning how to do dialysis for myself.

The year has gone quickly. I did get a bit depressed at about the 3 month mark thinking that there are no “vacations” from this, but have gotten over it and look at it as simply a part of my daily routine.

My buttonholes and sticking go very well. I’ve had my problems with labs, primarily calcium and phosphorus most likely due to PTH issues, but all in all, like is good.

Having never done a single in center treatment, I can’t compare like on home dialysis to life on in center dialysis, but I don’t think I would have it any other way. My life is minorly impacted, I don’t do as much in the evenings as I used to, but if it is something important I can either change my day off or just take an extra day off, the beauty of 6x a week, 4 hour a day, dialysis. (I don’t do this often, maybe once every couple of months).

For those of you contemplating home dialysis, I say go for it, take whatever machine is available and make it work for you. I may still try to switch to the NxStage, but at least now I am at home, living my life, I can live with that for now.

Cathy S
self home hemo 9/04
PKD
No. CA

2

Congratulations Cathy!! You went right for it, too. You knew what you wanted, grabbed it, and adapted. That’s what we did also. It ook us a little longer and today’s technology wasn’t around then, but we knew what we wanted to do and did it.
I know you can’t compare to in-center, but evenings, not to mention a whole day, and day after were consumed with travel, dialysis, and sicknes afterwards. Home dialysis eliminated much of this with the exception of a TX at home, an hour before and after. That was it!
Again, congrats!!
John

3

Yay, congrats! “I lift my glass of champagne and pledge a toast to Cathy!..Cheers Cathy, your a winner!”

P.S. If you do switch to NxStage System One, I’ll invite you to our private NxStage users Group at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/NxStageUsersGroup/ … :smiley:

4

A very big congratulations, Cathy. It’s only been about 7 months on home hemo for me, but that was preceded by 2-1/2 years on regular in-centre hemo. I’ve done both 2 hour short daily treatments, and daily nocturnal. I think you deserve a medal for doing 4 hour treatments 6 days per week. I don’t think I could stand daily treatments that long, myself. Nocturnal is Ok because I sleep through most of it. I’ve never even done 4 hours at the dialysis centre, because my 3/week treatment were only 3-1/2 hours - and at the time, I thought even that felt like an eternity.

I think doing hemodialysis at home every day takes a lot of perseverance and courage, and you deserve a great big pat on the back.

And… Thanks again for your tip back in the spring about how to do rinseback. It has made my life a lot easier every morning when I take myself off.

Pierre

5

Congratulations as well, Cathy

A year is a good marker to look back at when you have a difficult day and know that you can get through it like all the other days.
And congratulations for having the courage to be Home ALone Free.
And whatever you went through to do that.

Regards,
Guillaume

6

Cathy -

Another congratulations to your amazing acomplishment!

I am sure that most of us on this forum, especially those of us doing home hemo, were eventually able to get over the fact that am incredible amount of time that is spent doing hemo. But I, unfortunately, am not on of those people yet.

Switching from in-center to home hemo has certainly made me feel less angry about the time spent on hemo, but I still have yet to be able to really and truly integrate it into my life like you would a normal job, or chores around the house.

Since you have never done in-center Cathy, I’m curious to know more about how you seem to have done what I would call the impossible, which is to have been able to start right off the bat seeing hemo as just another part of your life. Do you think it was the simple fact that you never had to deal with driving to a clinic and being stuck there for hours on end?

Do you have any insights that you may be able to fill me in on that would finally let me really integrate hemo into my life? I hate it when everytime I think about the fact that I am tied down to my dialysis machine I want to scream.

7

[quote=“estonb”]Cathy -

Since you have never done in-center Cathy, I’m curious to know more about how you seem to have done what I would call the impossible, which is to have been able to start right off the bat seeing hemo as just another part of your life. Do you think it was the simple fact that you never had to deal with driving to a clinic and being stuck there for hours on end?

I was quite determined to do home hemo and worked on my neph for 3 years, converting him from someone who said it was completely impossible, to being on a committee to see if home hemo, and especially daily hemo, had any merits. I also lucked out that a clinic accepted me as a person without a partner that was coming from nearly 50 miles away. I was also considered by my caregivers as extremely knowledgeable and the “perfect” test case which also helped. I think it also helped that I was trained as a partner 30+ years ago for my father’s dialysis at home, as the back up to my mother.

With regard to “accepting it”, I do not think that never having been in center helped. I actually think it might have hurt a little, since I didn’t have to be thankful to finally be in control of my treatments, and realize how much better off I am to be doing daily, at home, treatments. I do think my general outlook on life helps that, as well as being the single mom to an 11 year old who I want to have a parent for as long as possible. Many people have serious diseases they have to live with, most don’t interfere with daily life, but diabetes does. I just look at it as something I have to live with, there really isn’t anything I can do about it. I admit that at around the 2nd or 3rd month I did get a bit depressed realizing that this was my life, maybe forever, but I got over it and realized that yes, this is MY LIFE, and without it I wouldn’t be alive.

Do you have any insights that you may be able to fill me in on that would finally let me really integrate hemo into my life? I hate it when everytime I think about the fact that I am tied down to my dialysis machine I want to scream.

My advice is to think about what you would be doing with this time if you weren’t on the machine, and then try to accomplish this even being on the machine. I realized that most of what I do in the evenings is dinner, deal with my son, some computer stuff, read my mail, watch TV, read etc., then I realized that I am still doing the same things, just hooked up to a machine…

Thanks everyone for your good wishes, I know there are more anniversaries coming up.

8

Thanks Cathy. I hope that I, too, will someday be able to finally just accept the fact that hemo is in my life. Period.

Hopefully, that day will come to me soon.