Week Eighteen - the first day of dialysis.......

This was our second day of training.  We had promised Babygirl that we wouldn't do anything the first day, but the change in her labs was dire enough that even I felt that waiting any longer would be detrimental to her.  So we jumped in, like it or not.

The nurse at the dialysis center is apparently working only with our baby this week.  We are, to say the least, unacustomed to such personal care at this institution. She listened to all of our concerns yesterday, and all of our complaints as well, and took them seriously.  She had spoken to the nephrologist and arranged for the first pass of dialysis on a gravity system, without the machine.  We need to learn how to do this anyway in case of power outages.  In a world where I usually think of every contingency, it never occured to me to worry about THAT beyond contacting out power company to let them know we need power more than other people do in an emergency.

Our little one tolerated the gravity dialysis pretty well, and wanted to convince the nurse that she could manage just that at home.  The nurse explained to her that it would mean going to school with all the fluid in her belly - not a comfortable thing, not to mention that the larger volumes of fluid would make my thin child look pregnant.

We moved on to one pass of the machine-managed dialysis.  While it did cause a little pain at the end of the drain cycle, we were taught ways to override this, and Babygirl was taught how to stop the flow of fluid, so she feels a little more in control.  Will be starting to use the machine at night at home by the end of the week.  We do have permission to skip dialysis so we can go camping for Labor Day weekend.

Oh, and another minor detail.  Babygirl was offered a kidney yesterday.  Holy crap!  But the new nephrologist felt it wasn't a good match.  Blood type and tissue okay, health of the donor? Not so much. He said that if our child were in more desperate straits he'd have gone for it, but she can wait for a better kidney.  My eyebrows are still stuck someplace under my bangs LOL.  At least we know she is moving up the list.

Overall, it wasn't a horrible experience.  But I confess that the daily drive to the dialysis center is already old, and it's only Tuesday, right?  Dang.

DeeDee