My life with dialysis and kidney disease
Archive for March, 2006
The Joys of Traveling While on Dialysis
Mar 3rd
As you may already know Anna and I are traveling to L.A. next week. I wrote a bit the other day about the “fun” of arranging dialysis at another clinic.
I was informed yesterday that they aren’t going to allow me to buttonhole there, because they aren’t familiar with the technique, and don’t want to risk any “complications”. This confused me – they don’t seem to understand what the buttonhole technique is.
Today the fun ensued with the following discussion between the clinic’s social worker and I regarding me putting myself on:
me: “I understand your F.A. informed ours that I can’t buttonhole in your clinic – I just wanted to make sure that I’ll still be able to self cannulate.”
social worker: “Yeah, about that … we’re going to put you on like a normal patient, and just use your fistula.”
me: “Right, but I self cannulate, and wanted to make sure that’s ok.”
social worker: “Yeah, well since we’re not familiar with that we’re going to just use your fistula.”
me: “I don’t think you understand what I’m talking about – self cannulating means I put in my own needles, I will still be using my fistula.”
social worker: “Oh, well that shouldn’t be a problem.”
First of all, I can’t comprehend that another clinic in the DaVita network hasn’t even heard of the buttonhole technique. I don’t understand how it’s possible that you can work in this industry, and operate a clinic without even having heard of a technique used around the world for the last 25 years. To not understand the word “cannulate” seems over the top to me.
Needless to say I’m a bit apprehensive at this point.
Let’s hope everything goes well, and that they actually let me stick myself – preferably with buttonhole needles.
Until next time…
Buttonhole Update
Mar 1st
Sorry,
After my traveling rant – I forgot to give a buttonhole update.
The buttonhole sites are going awesome. Every treatment or two I run into some resistance – no two sticks seem to be identical. I have been able to get them in though, and have figured out how to “back out” and try again through my buttonhole track.
Arterial and venous pressures are awesome, and I have no pain at the sites. For those of you thinking about this: DO IT.
There is no contraindication that I have found. Why doctors aren’t offering this to everyone is beyond me.
Advocate for yourself, and educate yourself. This is the key. If you feel this technique is good for you, push for it!
And again: see you all next week.
Traveling, and Buttonhole Update
Mar 1st
We’re traveling to California next week, so my apologies ahead of time if you don’t see anything for a week or so.
As always, any trip must first be arranged weeks in advance – to coordinate between the dialysis clinics, and make sure all the paperwork is in order. You’d think that since these companies are by and large ‘for profit’ entities, they’d have a “come as you please and dialyze” service. Nothing like that quite exists yet.
So to take a trip, you must first find a clinic where you’re going, then make sure they even accept traveling patients. If they do, you move to the next step – coordinating schedules, faxing patient histories, Dr’s orders, etc. This can be a bit of a pain, and sometimes it seems as if the whole process is very delicately balanced.
You sort of just wait for the bottom to fall out. Not once have I traveled and had everything go as it was supposed to. This is of course to be expected, we are playing the game of Life after all. But leaving home and not being certain that the arrangements for dialysis will be in place before you get there is a bit disconcerting.
More than two weeks ago I set the ball in motion. I even did the leg work – I found the clinic, called them, checked their schedule, (actually Anna found the clinic, but still…). The social workers then should communicate with each other, and figure out all of the particulars. Everything seemed to be going smoothly – orders were faxed, calls were made, questions asked. I should have known better. On Wednesday Anna asked me to check and make sure everything was set (I figured no news was good news – but I’m an idiot). Well, sure enough there was a mixup. Another patient here is traveling, and supposedly there was some confusion as to who was going where, when. So apparently no real communication had been made, and today the clinic where I’m going let our Administrator know that I can only dialyze there on TTS (Tuesday Thursday Saturday shift). This poses two problems. One, I will leave here on a Tuesday, meaning I won’t dialyze between Monday and Thursday. That’s essentially two weekends in a row. Ok, I can handle that. But we’re flying back the following Tuesday, which means I’ll have an über-weekend between Saturday and Wednesday (when I will return to my clinic).
After thinking about it for a bit I realized there was no way that was going to work.
Our F.A. (Facility Administrator) is awesome in the absence of a social worker here – In 30 minutes he was able to do more “legwork” than three past social workers. Typically the social worker takes a lot (LOT) of time to get things like this done, and when things need to be done quickly, it’s nice to have someone decisive, and better still, proactive.
Well, before leaving today, our F.A. let me know that he had found another place willing to let me dialyze there on MWF (Monday Wednesday Friday shift).
Awesome – after nearly blowing my top earlier, all is well again in the Universe.
Lesson?
Don’t try to arrange family trips to quickly.
No … the lesson is chill out! None of this stuff is worth getting worked up about. It all works out.
See you all next week
