Day of Empowerment

What an interesting day!  Thursday is supposed to be one of my days off, as I am a Monday-Wednesday-Friday dialysis guy, but I went in today to have an extra session.  It seems that I have been gaining too much weight too quickly.  As it turns out, not only did I not need dialysis to remove extra liquid, but I had to drink three extra liters of liquid today to get my system right!  My weight gain is all muscle.

My stick got hard just typing that last sentence.

I spent the entire afternoon at the emergency room at George Washington University Hospital confirming the fact that there is nothing (else) wrong with me.  And yes, you better believe that I enjoyed every moment.  I’ve been to the hospital so many times in the last 18 months that I knew to stock up on food and water before checking myself in.  I got a foot-long from Subway and cookies, pretzels, Doritos, Wheat Thins, and a liter of water from CVS on the way in.  While waiting for this and that in my “private” room, I scarfed down half of the foot-long, ate a couple of cookies, drank all the water, ate all the Doritos, and drank 12 ounces of apple juice that the hospital provided.  And this was after devouring my usual dialysis lunch of cookies and a sandwich!  I might regret eating and drinking like a trencherman tomorrow … but it sure feels good right now!!!!

On the train ride home, I did my best to collect myself and let this all sink in.  I wanted to thank the Lord for taking such good care of me when I needed it most; as such, I asked the Lord to point me toward a prayer of thanks.  It came to me immediately.

Our Father

Who art in heaven

Hallowed be thy name

Thy kingdom come

Thy will be done

On earth, as it is in heaven

Give us this day our daily bread

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us

And lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil

Amen.

And let me not forget to thank my beautiful wife Hilva for keeping me alive.  Thank you, my dear!  Thank you.

The Nutrition Adventure

Part of my dialysis treatment is having blood drawn once a month to test for pretty much everything under the sun.  Every time I start feeling cocky, my blood work comes back from the lab and slaps me back into reality.  Today is the day!  My weight is within the acceptable range; my blood pressure is OK; I feel stronger than I have in a while; and I even got a smile from the – well, why blow that?  So I fully expect my blood work to bring me down a peg or two.  The usual suspects are albumin (protein), phosphorus and potassium.

Here comes “Lou”, my nutritionist, with the results:

JJJJJJJJ

Happy happy!!!  FINALLY!!  YAY!!  I did good.  YAY!!!!  Good marks all around!

So now what?  Patience and moderation, my boy!  Cut back on the Chobani yogurt to once a week or so.  Eat more salmon and tuna. Yogurt notwithstanding, maintain dairy intake (sorry, no ice cream or pudding).  No corn chips.  Continue to eat lots of veggies (broccoli, asparagus, experiment with others).  No whole wheat.  No nuts.  No chocolate, That’s right, no chocolate.  And, of course, no potatoes or tomatoes.

I am looking forward to my birthday, when I can have two forbidden foods!  Right now, I am leaning toward chocolate fudge cake with dark chocolate icing and vanilla ice cream on the side.  We shall see – oh boy, we shall see!

And in the meantime, they don’t call me Cookie Monster for nuthin’….

Weird Stuff Part One: Veins and Fistulas

About six weeks after I started dialysis, my veins started “popping” or becoming visible just under my skin.  It started with my forearms.  One night I woke up to find my left arm asleep; when I looked at it, a vein was zigzagging its way from my wrist to the elbow and all the way back to the wrist (at least it looked that way).  This started a complete and total fascination with my blood vessels – veins in particular – that continues to this day.

Veins are actually very weak muscles that transport oxygen-depleted blood back to the heart.  They vary in size, thickness, length, angle of vector or curve, elasticity, and in far too many other ways to mention here – and that’s just taken from the few veins that are visible.  At a couple of places (wrist, crook of elbow, neck) you can actually see movement of the vein as blood is pumped .  My calves have really intricate vein layouts, and they look to be completely different on each leg.

When my fistula was built in my left arm, I was completely freaked out by the entire idea.  A fistula is the result of a grafting procedure in which a vein in the patient’s arm is grafted to an artery, increasing the blood flow in a specific area to make the dialysis procedure faster and more effective.  It’s quite visible on the arm, in my case as a intricate vein/artery structure on the upper inside of the lower arm and a huge artery/vein that runs along the top outside of my left bicep.  Fistulas look different on some people; some are relatively unobtrusive; some appear as odd bulges; some look really bad.  Dr. Nakki, the person who performed the surgery, says that this is mainly because people keep using the same spot on the arm vein to insert the two needles that are inserted at the beginning of each dialysis; this causes keloids, scarring and sometimes infection.  Knock wood, I think Dr. Nakki did an excellent job on my fistula.  It’s my understanding that a well-tended fistula can last for decades; here’s to mine doing just that. 

At first I was alternately fascinated and horrified by this half-natural, half-manmade grouping of veins and arteries.  The blood flow is extremely strong; it feels like one of those “joy buzzers” if you touch it in the right spot.  And just like the rest of the body, the fistula veins don’t all become visible at the same time; it’s a gradual process that takes month to complete as the fistula matures.  So every once in a while, I would look down on my arm and say “holy crap what is that?”  Now things have calmed down down there, and so have I.  I’m as used to this thing as I’m going to get, I guess.