Ok, I do apologize for the delay in reporting all of this. I'll explain below.
NOTE: The notes below portray MY experience based on my medical conditions. No one reading this should assume that you will have a similar experience. I've never heard anyone else say they had the issue with their back that I'm reporting below. So this is not a negative comment about PD at all. Do not take it as that. I'm just reporting my experience. I'm hoping switching to the cycler takes care of the issue.
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Last friday (Day 5 of PD Training), the PD nurse came to my house. There she watched me set up and do an exchange at 9:30. This took a while since we were going through it step by step from the instruction notes that I had taken (which I will post later) She directed me how to sanitize my work space using 100:1 bleach, then layout all my supplies, do the "extreme" hand wash and then follow through with filling my peritoneal cavity with 2000ml of 1.5 solution. She ran through some safety tips then she left. After I had let the solution dwell for 4 hours, I carefully followed the procedure for draining and flushing and then refilling using a new bag that I had kept in a cooler with the heating pad she supplied set to "low". Then I repeated the entire drain, flush, fill procedure again that afternoon and again that night before going to bed with a tummy full of fluid.
Ok, this is where I'm going to veer off the story a tad and will continue the story in Day 6 (Sunday) notes. On Monday, the first day of training, I noticed that night that I felt a twinge of pain in my back when I got home from the training after dwelling for a full 4 hours that day, but then draining it all out before I went home. I didn't think much of it, thinking it was just my usual back stuff that I'd dealt with for years, no big thing. Well Tuesday after that dwell, I noticed a bit of that pain when I got out of the chair at the clinic. Those chairs recline back a bit, I assume they are made for the comfort of those on in-Center HD. So you have to strain just a tad go pull up straight before getting out of the chair. Well by Wednesday, the pain was hitting at other times, basically anytime I would get out of a chair and go from sitting to standing position. It was like a flash of hot pain in my lower back. And it caused my muscles to tense up when it hit. I couldn't help it. Then on Thursday, just leaning down to clean the table legs and the iv pole legs which is part of the sanitizing process before an exchange, I felt pain when standing back up, and I the pain was much stronger when going from sitting in the chair to standing. By friday, when the PD nurse was at my house, I was noticeably miserable. Even reaching for the hand sanitizer or twisting in my chair to get something or heck even reaching for toilet paper brought on sever pain. My fists would grasp my chair arms fiercely and I would grit my teeth an couldn't help but moan in pain. But I thought that I needed to just bear through it, that it would subside if I just rested on the bed between exchanges with a hot pad to my back. So such luck. Saturday And Sunday were repeats of Friday, except on Sunday, I just didn't sit any more. I would stand to do the drain for 20 minutes, and the flush, then kneel on my knees for the 10 minutes to do the fill. But by Sunday night (Day 7), I knew I could not continue with what I was doing. The pain was excruciating, though it did go away at night so I could sleep.
See my next post for Week 6 - for the continuation of this journey.
