Hello everyone! A lot has happened since I last posted, so I thought I'd give an update. My kidney officially failed and I got really sick a few weeks to a month and a half ago (it's sorta blurry) and I ended up going into the hospital for emergency dialysis. After five days, two surgeries (one for a tunneled hemo chest catheter and my perotineal catheter was placed the very next day) and four hemo treatments later I was released to go back home. I'm currently doing hemo dialysis treatments until my catheter is healed and I've been trained on how to do exchanges.
According to my family members I looked like death was on my door with how pale and out of it I was. I don't remember most of my hospital stay though. I was told by the doctors at the hospital that it was good that I came in when I did because I was getting worse until I started the hemo treatments.
There are a few bumps with hemodialysis though; when in the hospital I had horrible chest pain that left me panicking and barely able to breath after my second treatment that prompted the rapid response team. After a lot of pain medication and oxygen the pain went away but it would come back for a few days afterward. The nephrologist deemed it a combination of coming out od anesthesia, nerve pain from the diaphram after moving and just my body's reaction to the sudden removal of toxins.
I still don't react the best to hemo dialysis (I have had disequilibrium syndrome) but overall I'm doing better. I'm healing very well and was told by the PD nurse that I could be on PD full time by the first of the year. At the moment I'm just focused on healing and trying to get as close to where I was before this all began as possible.
Despite nothing going how I thought they would, I'm past being angry about it. I know that there's a greiving process and that I still have some to do, but I'm just letting myself deal with it naturally. It's been a rough few months, especially in the last few weeks, but there's finally a light at the end of the tunnel. Still working on transplant and will eventually be looking at finishing my incompletes from fall term at school. Just gotta take it one day at a time.
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