Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Week in the hospital


I went in for the dialysis catheter on Tuesday, January 20th. I fasted since Monday night and they had me wait at the UCD hospital all day. The appointment was at 11 am and my catheter was placed at 5 pm, then I didn't feel like eating until the next morning. The catheter placement was so painful, they barely sedated me, if at all. I felt every needle prick, about 12. The shoving in of the catheter was the most painful. Afterward, they couldn't stop the bleeding, so the nurses took turns pressing their fingers onto the wounds many times for long periods, I wanted to cry. They didn't give me pain medication until my husband requested they give me some after all the pressing. We requested my bloodwork results and they gave them to us later, my platelets were 89 and my hemoglobin 8. They sent me home, still bleeding and told me to go to emergency if it didn't stop. A few hours later, Yarid took me to the Sutter emergency room, where they did some more pressing. An ambulance picked me up and took me to the Woodland Memorial at 1 am. That morning, I had a transfusion and my first dialysis session together. It made me nauseas and dizzy and raised my blood pressure. Afterwards, I couldn't breathe, and I felt like fainting, by the time the nurse believed me, it was night and they found that I only had about 50 % oxygen, instead of 100%. I was rushed to the ICU. They drugged me and placed a breathing mask on me. I woke up toward the end of my second (emergency) dialysis. I would have drowned without it. They told me I had fluid overload. The next morning, I had dialysis again, I had nausea and dizziness, then I almost vomited. My body became very hot and I went deaf for a while. I almost passed out but they stopped that part of the dialysis. Later they told me my heart had stopped beating for 6 seconds twice during th0se 15 seconds, when I almost passed out. Monday, I had another dialysis session, and I became nausea, dizzy and had very strong stomach pains, my session had to be limited. I was discharged and went home with a major headache. The highest my blood pressure went during the week was 240/130. They can't figure out why it's always high. Tomorrow, I'll have a new dialysis session in Dixon. I am afraid.

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