Rollercoaster Ride

I had a comment in my e-mail that I should describe how I have felt emotionally about this process of waiting for a transplant - so here it goes.

The only thing I could compare this to is a rollercoaster with a lot of hills and many very steep drops. I've been on dialysis since November of 2004. Things seemed to be going along fairly well until about two months ago, that's when the trouble started.

The trouble - the catheter I use for my dialysio bad I thought had become obstructed. To fix this I would have to a routine and simple endoscopic operation. Only a couple of small holes would be needed. Not so bad I thought. Was I ever wrong!

The operation itself was a success but, I started bleeding internally. I lost about 70% of my total blood volume. I was near death - they rushed my back into surgery and had to open me up to recover the blood and stop the bleeding. This left me with a large scar from about two inches above my belly button to my groin. I survived this and a few cays later was sent home good as new.

The following week they removed the staples. I thought it was a little soon because diabetics don't heal as fast as normal people but, the doctor said it looked fine. I was eating breakfast two days later and felt cold. When I stood up blood and dialysis came pouring out. I was scared - So was Sue. My shirt and pants were covered in abloody mess. My parents had come to visit and help out, so we wrapped a towel around me and headed off to the hospital emergency room.

I was sent back into surgery to reclose and restich the wound. A few days later I was allowed to go home. This time they waited a week before removing the staples and I used smaller volumes in my exchanges. I started having pain whenever I drained the dialysis fluid from my body. I told the doctors this - they said it was just tenderness from the operation not to worry. ong! It turned out to be an infection. I was having sver back pain Icouldn't walk or even stand. This is where the morphine in my last post came into play.- back into nthe hospital again .