So I've been putting off this post for a while, so i could do a fairly "inclusive" amount of information in one post.
First, I want to report SUCCESS in my PD journey. It's actually working! Whoo hoo!
This has been quite the episode for me. Not sure if I can definite it exactly other than in terms of "relationship" development, which seems to be appropriate for Valentines season. As you all know, i had a very rocky start with PD. I totally flunked manuals last August/Sept because of extreme back pain I experienced during the "dwell" when I would try to go from sitting position to standing. The pressure from the 2000ml of PD fluid really ticked off some nerve in my lower back, so that didn't happen. Then I was on the cycler for a week before stopping to have hernia repair surgery. I then took an extended leave of absence from PD until that healed and until the holidays were totally over. That put me two weeks into January when I first hooked back up to the cycler.
Since then, Amy (how I affectionately reference my Baxter Amia Cycler) and I have been slow to warm up to each other, developing over this last month. The first three weeks were filled with cycler alarms, drain pain, and just plain anxiety on my part (Amy doesn't get anxiety). I tried multiple positions in the first couple of weeks as I endured some fairly significant (though not endurable) drain pain. Lying on my back, my left side, my right side, my stomach all gave different types of drain pain experiences. None caused me to have to stop the drain process, so it was doable, just not pleasant. A lot of times I would already be awake, having waked up because I heard Amy's purring sound (sorta like the purring of an HT printer at work). Sometimes I would be waked up at the initial feeling of drain pain, and toss and turn and distort myself in different positions, shapes in an effort to get it calm down. I would bend my knees, or straighten my legs out, or lift my knees in the air if on my back, or rain my butt up in the air if on my stomach, I tried everything a circus contortionist would do. So those first two weeks were very much an experiment in positioning to relive the drain pain, AND to respond to cycler alarms.
Amy would go off after I had drained about 3/4 of the 2000ml of fluid out and give me a "slow patient flow" message, indicating that there was not enough fluid flowing out of my peritoneal to satisfy her. She's a hungry gal. And most times, all of my tossing and turning would NOT satisfy her. So she would offer up her nagging squawking alarm until I drug myself out of be and basically stood up until I had completed draining. Standing was the only position that would satisfy her and cause her to turn the alarm off. It would take roughly 10 minutes each drain to complete the drain. I also experienced a great reduction in drain pain while standing.
Well after a few nights of Alarms and drain pain, I knew I had to find something to eliminate the two issues. After the second week, I noticed that when I lay on my left side (my catheter exists my right side), I had a much reduced level of drain pain that other positions. AND I found that I was actually able to sleep through a couple of drains without Amy sounding an alarm. So each night, I assume the anxiety of anticipation of the pain or the alarm, would allow me to wake up before each drain, or just as the machine hum would start, and I would flip over on my left side with my knees barely bent, legs pretty much extended, and in that position I noticed a significant reduction in drain pain, and no alarming response from Amy.
So going into the fourth week last week, I was able, on Wednesday night, to experience all four drains without drain pain (well almost none) and no alarms from Amy. I was thrilled. I felt like I had conquered mt Everest! Now that was short lived as on Thursday night, Friday and Saturday, I did have one or two slow flow alarms because I was in the wrong position when I awoke to the alarm, and had to stand and salute Amy until she turns the alarm off again, But at least I have found the "sweet spot" for my PD. Now I just have to train myself to be in that position each time a drain starts. Not sure how to do that, but I'll figure it out. I'm just thrilled that I had that one night of no pain and no alarms. I hope to add many additional nights to it in coming days/weeks.
I go in Tuesday (Valentines day) to find out how the labs that they took last week show my dialysis is working. I had to do a 48hour urine collection, and then take a sample from an effluent drain bag and take it in to the clinic. This will let us know if my prescription should be adjusted. Meaning if I need to add time to the 8 hours I'm dialyzing each night, or use a different strength solution, or add more exchanges. I'll update this post once I get those labs.
So, PD is all about relationship building I'm finding out. I mean how else would you describe being intimately physically connected to a being (Amy is a being, I have no doubt about it with her different responses to seemingly the same input on different nights). There's obviously LOTS of give and take in our relationship (PD fluid), and I have a LOT of conversation with her in the middle of the night when her nagging alarms are going off and I'm hopping around like a toad trying to make her happy and convince her to shut off her alarms 
And I have to care for her with daily cleaning, software updates, gentle handling, and making sure she has power to eat. And the voice they've given her to "talk" to me is actually quite pleasant, even during the nagging alarms. So overall the experience with her has been challenging (most good relationships are), but we are getting to the point of being able to "grok" each other (That's a Robert Heinland coined word meaning "a concept of self transcendent experience and emergent identification beyond those of many "subject-object" assumptions."
So my relationship with Amy will grow and develop in coming weeks, I'm sure. I'll update our progress occasionally.
But thanks!
Clinic experience with PD?
