My dad will be needing dialysis soon & we’ve decided to try PD @ night. I have a few questions: 1) my dad currently needs to get up several times during the night to go to the restroom. Will he have to disconnect from the PD catheter each time & reconnect? If so, will the cycler machine resume the dialysis? 2) Can a person eat/drink anything during the time he is connected to the cycler? 3) Is it okay to store the diasylate bags in a garage where it might get hot, as this is the only space that has enough storage space? 4) If 2 bags of diasylate are used, will the 2nd bag be warm by the time it is needed, as it will be on a cart & not directly on the cycler? Thanks for any questions that you can answer, as this is/will be very new to our family.
When your Dad needs a bathroom at night, I am assuming he needs only to pass urine. He will not be able to disconnect from the cycler but should have a urinal at the bedside to use. Disconnecting from the cycler is a sterile procedure which he will learn all about how to do in training before he ever goes home on PD. It would be a risk for contamination to disconnect during the cycler session at night unless there is an emergency (such as a fire in the house!!). As for eating and drinking while on the cycler, the answer is yes, he may. Of course this means either someone needs to bring him food/drink while on the cycler or he should put it at his bedside before connecting to the cycler. Most patients are not on the cycler so long as to need to eat and drink, but perhaps your father needs a late night snack. As for storing the cycler bags, the area must not be where they will freeze or be extremely hot. You should talk with the PD nurses about this and they can help make appropriate plans for safe storage. And for your last question about the solution being heated, don’t worry about it. The bag on the top of the cycler is like a holding tank where the proper amount of solution is warmed before being sent to the patient. The machine pulls solution from the other bags into the warming bag on the cycler. The cycler is a well engineered machine which manages a lot of issues for the patient during the dialysis session. Hope these answers help and please feel free to ask me more questions.
Thanks very much for such a quick reply. I’m sure as the day draws nearer, I’ll have more questions.