Well, I've finally started nocturnal dialysis and much to my chagrin it is not what I thought it would be. It is torture. The first couple of dialysis sessions were only two hours long and were uneventful and went by rather pleasantly. However, I'm now doing twice a week, nocturnal dialysis (6 hours each session), and I'm experiencing the following issues:
1) Towards the end of the third hour my blood pressure is raised due to dangerous levels (Systolic is over 200). The first time I was told it was because they were trying to take off too much fluid (I still make urine); the second time they didn't really have an answer. This concerns as I notice my heart beating fast and my lips start tingling, and it feels like I'm going to have some sort of "cardiac event" right in the dialysis chair.
2) Nocturnal dialysis starts late afternoon, or early evening, which is when my blood pressure tends to be a bit raised anyways.
3) Six hours in a dialysis chair in a dialysis center is brutally too long for me. You're hooked up to the machines and have limited mobility.
4) It gets icy cold in the dialysis chair after a couple of hours as one is not moving during dialysis. Even with a couple of blankets, I am freezing. This tends to raise my blood pressure.
5) After about the second hour of dialysis, I have to urinate frequently which requires assistance from the technicians and the use of a bottle to pee in. Not fun.
6) After 3 or 4 hours of dialysis I start getting leg cramps in my calves. The staff chastise me for trying to stand up which will stop the cramps.
7) During each 6 hour long dialysis, the staff had to replace the dialyzer as, according to them, my blood has clotted. One technician asked if I was on a blood thinner, and I said "No", and he mentioned that he thought it was strange that there was no Heparin (blood thinner) in the dialysis fluid.
8) I'm not able to sleep during nocturnal dialysis because the machine keeps beeping (due to the issues I mentioned above), and because I can hear the other patients that are snoring, even though I wear headphones to try to block the sound.
9) Some of the staff are condescending to me with frequent chastisements which aren't necessary (IMHO).
10) When I'm finally allowed to leave the dialysis center, I'm in a bad place mentally as I feel like I just went though six hours of torture.
11) I don't have confidence in the competence of the staff. For the reasons listed above, and because I had to make an unnecessary to the Emergency Room since they had incorrectly reported that I had a dangerously low hemoglobin (which turned out to be a false alarm). The dialysis nurse subsequently chastised me for missing a dialysis appointment and not bringing my discharge papers to my next appointment when it was their fault that I had to go to ER.
Well, I think this covers most of the issues. I don't wish to do anymore nocturnal dialysis and don't wish to return to this particular dialysis center. If anyone has had similar experience, it would good for me to "compare notes" and am curious what dialysis they found more palatable. Thanks.
Dialysis Options
27 years off dialysis
dialysis
PD dialysis
