So today (Thursday), it was solo flight day. The PD nurse had me go through the entire connection procedure (which I will document once I get it all typed up this weekend) myself. No major mistakes other than spilling some iodine from the Cap onto my pants (learned to put something over my pants when doing the connection and not to turn the cap pointing down! Then while I was dwelling, she grilled me on more questions from the training modules. And she want over the procedure for IF I made a major mistake like touching the end of the Patient connector or the end of the solution fill line after removing the pull top. More on that in detail later as well. Oh and we went over what to do if a tornado warning happens in the middle of a connection or fill or drain. (It could happen here where I live!) Then she let me practice on our "dummy" one more time. They really want you to pass flight school!
And the final thing we did during the "dwell" was go over the labs that came in from the blood work she did on Monday (Day 1) Everything looked A-OK except for iron. NOW I know why I needed to sleep 10-11 hours a night! It was like 17 when it's supposed to be between 30 and 50. My doc never checked it I don't think. So she shot me up with some really tarry looking iron stuff. Didn't hurt, sting, or anything (not that I was disappointed).
After the dwell, the PD nurse had me to do my own "disconnect". Again, she was washed up and ready to jump in if I screwed something up, but it went just fine. So she gave me a gold star upon completion. Whoo hoo.
Before I left, she loaded me down with stuff I will need at home starting tomorrow that Baxter had not shipped.
That included a blood pressure cuff which I will use to record my blood pressure and pulse on their website every morning using the app on my phone. And a digital thermometer that I'll use every morning to record as well. That's in addition to the scales they shipped last friday that I use to record my weight every morning. I'll also record my fill amount, my drain amount, describe my drained fluid appearance, describe my exit site condition, whether I cleaned it, if I used antibiotic cream on it. It also asked if I added any medication to my PD solution before the fill. (I'll learn how to do that on monday). The I submit the info and it shows up in my profile for the PD nurse to check. Also included was additional bottles of hand sanitizer, a lot of syringes for adding medication, a scale to weigh my PD solution and a ton of sterile 4x4's (will explain the use later). Oh and my cheat sheet of instructions.
So that was it for Day 4. As I mentioned. Tomorrow she will come to my house and watch me do an exchange here. Then I'm own my own the rest of the three exchanges tomorrow and this weekend, truly flying solo. Yikes!
First day of dialysis
Young Adult Kidney Patients Doing PD Dialysis
