In the USA, today celebrates MLK Day. It is also at record lows for North Texas. We have a light coating of snow. The Cowboys lost-again and are out of the NFL playoffs. Yesterday, when I did our morning walk with our Golden Retriever Dickens, it was 15 F with a gentle wind. It was on the quiet side outdoors. The golf courses that surround our hosing had all the greens covered up and for once golf carts where not flitting about like beetles following Brownian Motion. We did see a pair of Egyptian Geese who noisily scolded us. Yes it was chilly, but worth it.
Had a conversation with my Dialysis Nurse last week about the amount of Heparin I have been injecting into my dialyses bags. Up until then, I had been injecting 16 mL which was appropriate for my old prescription of 8 L per nite. It was thus increased to 10 L but I stayed with 16 mL Heparin and it seemed to work. With my current prescription of 13.5 L, I started getting drain alarms just about every night. The rule of thumb is 2 mL of Heparin per 2L of dialysis fluid, so by this, I should be using 2 mL x 13.5 = 27 mL of Heparin. Since I am arriving at 13.5 L with three 5 L bags, that maps out to roughly 10 mL of Heparin per bag, and for me, every other night. Since a single vial of Heparin holds 30 mL, we are essentially using an entire vial each application. My Dialysis Nurse agreed and that’s what I’m currently using.
In conjunction with the alarms reported above, my Liberty Cycler for two nights went off the rails from its normal month-after-month performance. It stated continuation of the pumping noise it makes on drains even during dwells. In between, it often made grating noises as if it were digesting something it didn’t like. Yes, dialysis patients often are guilty of the personification of their equipment. Last night was normal so hopefully we’re back to some degree of normalcy, whatever that is for those of us on dialysis.
Speaking of dialysis patients, surely there are (or were) hundreds if not thousands of such patients in Gaza, the Ukraine, Yemen, and other hot spots around the globe. On MLK day, we send our hopes that you have sought and found treatment in safe havens.
The lead picture was generated in Poe with the Prompt: “picture of a sailing ship in a safe haven from a raging storm.”
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