Wednesday October 11, 2006

Well we survived the weekend!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  We had a great time in Montreal, good company and good food!

Here's a shot of the 30lb turkey my sister-in-law made for us this weekend!  Can you say leftovers?

Well, Tuesday it was back to the hospital.  We were to start the cycler, however, we first needed to be trained on the manual dialysis or "twin bag" dialysis.  This is so that should there be an electrical power outage, that we know how to do the back-up manual method.

Johnson was feeling very tired on Tuesday, and we were glad to get started. 

So, Johnson started dialysis yesterday with the manual twin bag method - which he says was not that bad - but was a little painful when draining the fluid out of his abdomen.  It causes cramping way down in your bowels.

At the end of the day we got to try the cycler for a short period and that was a little worse when draining as gravity is not what is used to drain, but a pump or sucking method.  Ouch!

At the end of day Tuesday, Johnson went right to bed for a nap cause he was so fatigued.  When he woke at 7:00PM he took his blood sugars.  They were on the high side (17) so they must have been really high when we got home at 5:00PM.  You see the dialysis solution they give him has different concentrations of glucose in them to draw the toxins out of his body.  So this is now doing a good job of helping rid the toxins out of his body, but elevates his blood sugars with his diabetes.  So we are troubleshooting and adjusting insulin as needed. 

A huge supply of products, equipment etc is to arrive at our house this Friday.  That way we can try to use the cycler at home for the first time, then back to the hospital on Monday to complete the programming and training. 

Overall - Johnson is still feeling very tired and can't wait for the dialysis to kick in - he says he is  really getting tired of being tired all the time.