To those in home programs, what do you do if you lose electricity?
All home patients are backed by a center so if there is a power outage they can go in-center to be dialyzed. In our case though, we have a generator and we just run the treatment with the generator.
In the case of a massive power outage that obviously doesn’t happen very often, there is seldom a time when power is out for more than a few hours. Obviously we can miss a single treatment. If power goes out while on the machine, we are taught how to hand circulate the blood and if it is out more than 5 minutes we are instructed to simply get off the machine. It is our choice to go back on when the power comes on or to simply end that treatment and wait until the next day.
If I lived in an area that was prone to power outages I would probably do what Marty does and buy a generator. I also believe that our local power company may supply one if there was some kind of problem with power being out for a long period. We are noted on our bill that we utilize life sustaining medical equipment and receive slightly reduced rates.
This is pretty much the same protocol as most centers. Few have generators. This is another area where home is about the same as in center.
Th Aksys has battery power to get you rinsed back. I have a battery powered light on my wall that comes on immediately if the power goes off. The Aksys is vulnerable because it needs power before treatment to get ready and after to disinfect so a power outage would impact treatment even if you weren’t actually treating.
I haven’t had a power outage since going home but it could happen at any time.
If notified that a customer has a life-saving machine in the home, utility companies may be willing to put the address on a priority list to get power or water restored as soon as possible once the outage is over. Ask your home training nurse about this.
If one is doing a nocturnal tx and the electricity goes out in the middle of the night, does the machine alarm? Has anyone had this happen to them and what was it like dealing with this when half asleep?
It alarms and it alarms LOUD and steady. It’s a different alarm than normal machine alarms. In fact, it’s so loud that before you go to your manual rinseback procedure, on my machine, you have to stand up and reach behind the machine to pull out the little 9 volt battery compartment in order to stop the alarm - or else you might go deaf while taking yourself off. It hasn’t happened to me at home so far, but I practised it plenty in training. The nurse simply unplugged the machine.
Actually though, it’s not a big deal in a case like this if you don’t wake up right away. If you don’t all you’ve lost is the blood in your blood circuit. But if you don’t wake up to this, you wouldn’t wake up to every smoke detector in your house going off at the same time! It’s like having one of those go off right next to your head.
The procedure for taking yourself off is one of the simplest of all the emergency procedures though.
Pierre
In perhaps a half-dozen power outages I’ve never been able to respond quickly enough with the Fresenius hand crank to avoid loss of blood. This is only a minor issue, however, and we’ve never bothered to go into our center the next day as missing part or all of a run is no big deal for nocturnal patients.
I strongly endorse Bill’s point about having an emergency light near your dialysis site for anyone doing nocturnal so you can see the moment the power goes off. It’s also one more thing to help awaken you. You can buy them at places like Home Depot for about $35.
Mel
I keep a camping lamp powered by a big 6-volt battery on top of the machine, and I also have a small flashlight so I can check things if I have to during the night without turning the big lights on.
I know it’s one thing to do a procedure in training, and quite another to do it unexpectedly in the middle of the night.
Pierre
Bill writes:
Th Aksys has battery power to get you rinsed back. I have a battery powered light on my wall that comes on immediately if the power goes off. The Aksys is vulnerable because it needs power before treatment to get ready and after to disinfect so a power outage would impact treatment even if you weren’t actually treating.
So, this is another instance when a PHD home patient would have to go to an alternate schedule. How would this affect both the patient doing SDD and one doing nocturnal txs on the PHD?
Just how expensive are generators? Seems a generator would eliminate a lot of problems?
Pierre writes:
Actually though, it’s not a big deal in a case like this if you don’t wake up right away. If you don’t all you’ve lost is the blood in your blood circuit.
How long can you rest before needing to wake up and end the tx?
Jane asks:
How long can you rest before needing to wake up and end the tx?
Do you mean at any time, including morning? It’s funny, but by the time my treatment ends, I’m ready to get up, have coffee, take the dog out for a walk, and then have a big breakfast. But, if wanted to sleep in more, I would rinseback first, disconnect the needle lines from the bloodlines, attach a saline syringe to each needle line and leave the needles in, put the acid and bicarb connectors back into the machine, and go back to bed. If a power failure or something happened during the night, I would probably do the same thing.
Pierre[/quote]
I have had the electric go off in the middle of the night. I did a manual rinseback and really didn’t feel like I was doing it half asleep. For some reason when I am awaken in the middle of the night to an alarm (which is rare) my brain and body seem to function just fine. My experience with the utility company “priority list” is that there isn’t one. There are forms to fill out for it and their is a list but it does nothing to get our service back sooner. My choice at the time of the outage was to rinseback and skip the treatment or “start” the generator to finish the treatment. At which point decided it would be easier to just quit. Since then our generator has been upgraded with an automatic come on and go off capability so when he happens again I’ll just continue on with treatment as the generator will come on within 2 minutes of a power outage. I would have one of these generators regardless if I had medical equipment at home or not.
We had an outage awhile back in the evening, the whole day was windy but wasn’t raining at all and went ahead and did dialysis, but along the way after an hour the outage hit…crisp and black it was that I could not see anything!
However, the BIG light backup in the room came in handy which really lit the room well. Quickly I started “Twist & Shout”…(rinseback)…within seconds I have all my blood returned. Next day in the morning I did dialysis again… 8)
My program requires patients to notify the power company (not that they check that you have). It’s really only useful if there are planned outages during the night, just so that you know. It makes no difference with unintended outages.
Pierre
Bill writes:
The Aksys is vulnerable because it needs power before treatment to get ready and after to disinfect so a power outage would impact treatment even if you weren’t actually treating
.
If a power outage occurs during either of these two cycles, does the whole process need to be restarted?
Marty writes:
My choice at the time of the outage was to rinseback and skip the treatment or “start” the generator to finish the treatment. At which point decided it would be easier to just quit. Since then our generator has been upgraded with an automatic come on and go off capability so when he happens again I’ll just continue on with treatment as the generator will come on within 2 minutes of a power outage. I would have one of these generators regardless if I had medical equipment at home or not.
Marty,
What is the model generator you use?
It is 12,000 Watt Home Generator System Put out by Cutler-Hammer and Briggs & Stratton.
I was administering treatment to my wife yesterday during my second day of training on the NxStage machine when the power failed from a storm. Power came on within the two minute limit, and I was pleasantly surprised how smoothly the machine (and I) recovered. The power failed several times more but only after we had finished the treatment.
Mel
Mel,
Weren’t you a proponent of long, gentle txs. for your wife? Are you just trying the NxStage for awhile or have you decided to switch to short txs?