My husband is on PD. We do work with the PD department at our hospital, but I find that the information we are given lacks any logical assistance. It gets hard to know when to put him on what solution and when. They talk about a balance between his weight, swelling and his glucose number. The problem I am having is when I think I understand what I should be doing then it does not seem to work. I try talking to the clinic but seem to be a bother because I cannot seem to understand when I should put him on the yellow versus green versus red. Is there some sort of guideline out there that I can use?
We were told green if B/P normal and weight stable, red if weight up, BP up, and or swelling, yellow if dehydrated. Dont worry about blood sugar, use insulin to bring it down. We basically set our own BP limit for when to use red and never used a yellow. Hope that helps
How much extraneal are you using? How many diuretics (water pills) is he on? What is his urine output? How many liters does he do a day? When did he start dialysis? What state are you located in?
Utilizing more extraneal protects hemoglobin A1C (seen drops from 11.8% to 6.2% at our company) utilizing more medications and increasing fluids provides better results and increases quality of life when you stop utilizing the cycler.
remember Not all doctors are created equal. Not all nurses are the most current and up to date, and the saying “if this was a good treatment my doctor would know about it,” rarely ever applies.
2000 Extraneal, he is not on a water pill and urine output is 1200 Liters per day. He started PD in July last year but has had dialysis since April last year. His A1C was 7 even prior to putting him on the Extraneal the doctor put him on the extraneal to help with fluid removal. I just wish there was more guidelines on this. We decided to switch providers of PD to see if we can get a better understanding.
Great choice switching. My partner and I developed QLPD home dialysis, the premise is to increase output of urine. You need to be requesting a minimum of 100mg toresmide and metozalone 2.5mg bid or 5mg bid. If his output can increase to 2L plus you can significantly drop his dialysis requirements. Why are you controlling fluid with the extraneal when he could control his own volume with diuretics? Nephrologists spend their entire fellowship learning about hemodialysis and very little focus on PD. PD is run by the nurses more than the doctors only in the case of PD. Make sure you adovocate for more diuretics and less dialysis. He’s too new to dialysis to need all this massive amounts
I agree with what you are saying and that is some of the reasons we are switching. We felt more like we were being asked to be the professional versus the patient. The PD nurse did not seem to be able to answer our questions when it came to the solutions. It felt like a guessing game and although I know that everyone is different, there should be some past experiences or research that could direct us further. Knowing what I know now I was able to ask questions and I think the new place will be a better fit.
This is what I was told if my blood pressure is low 120 and under example last night it was 112/55 so I used one green and one yellow the green one on the heater . Above 120 two green . If my blood pressure super low like one day it was 88/55 I used two yellows . If blood pressure super high use two red which I never have. They want me to use two green the most when possible cause it get more fluid out . But I don’t have cramps when I do one green one yellow so I’m hoping I can stick to those more.