Well, it had to happen. LOL, I spend all night on dialysis, and it’s a completely uneventful night. I wake up and there are about 12 minutes to go. I tell myself, great!, I can sleep another 12 minutes - which is exactly what I do. Twelve minutes later, the end of treatment alarm sounds and I pop up and start going through my take-off routine. I stop the treatment clock, then I turn the blood pump speed down to 150. I untape my arterial blood line so I can connect it to the saline Y for rinseback. I stop the blood pump. Then I disconnect the arterial bloodline from the needle line. Oh! Oh! Blood gushes out all over the place because I forgot to close the stupid clamps. Note to self: what happened to my trick of always counting out the two damned clamps
And if that wasn’t enough, as I’m trying to close the clamp on the gushing needle line, I drop the arterial line onto the floor. Ok, what do I do now? Do I just forget about rinsing back? No way, not after already losing a bit of blood in the gusher and I’m not losing that blood circuit too. So I decide to pick it up and wipe the open end with an alcohol swab so I can do my rinseback.
I had a few choice words for myself this morning, but hey, nobody’s perfect. Tomorrow morning, I make sure I’m truly awake before I do anything :!:
Don’t beat yourself up Pierre. I’ve done something similar; in my experience you only do it once. Do you watch those CSI programs? - when I gushed I was amazed by how there were droplets of blood and blood splatter every where.
Bill’s right don’t beat yourself up. We have all goofed and sometimes big time. What I have noticed is the bigger the goof the less I am to make that mistake twice. Some how it really gets implanted in my brain.
Thanks for the reassurance, guys. I was doubly careful this morning. No blood
What I find interesting is how little blood spatters turn into little dry bits of loose blood, like a kind of blood dust.
Great clinic appointment this morning though. For example, urea 7.7 pre, 0.9 post-tx. I apparently have gained more weight, because BP is getting to be a little low pre-tx, such that it goes below 110 once the tx is started. They consider that to be too low. So, another increase in dry weight. When I was dialyzing in-centre, they NEVER in 2-1/2 years wanted to increase my dry weight, only decrease it. Now on daily hemo for 9 months, I’ve had my DW increased every other month! No apptetite problems, and, even though I tend to be 80% vegetarian, albumin consistently about 45.
