First, I’m on track to recuperate completely from my ailments. Saturday night for the first time in over a week I more or less slept through the night with only two Cycler alarms. My appetite is coming back, I’m picking up more of the tasks having to do with dialysis, eating better, and seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Some things learned from this ordeal:

  1. Cycler Alarms: I had been going along doing fine with the Cycler several nights in a row without alarms. Then suddenly I wasn’t and short of getting up was not able to silence them. The bed that we use is actually two XL beds side by side that make up a California King-sized bed that also articulates at the head and foot and vibrates etc. I tried elevating the head and hey, it worked. The alarms went away. Now I’m tweaking the system for the optimum angle that also supports a restful night.
  2. In preparation for my upcoming surgery, we had started training my wife Linda on setting everything up for dialysis. While she attended initially training with me, she has never been in a position where she had to do setups on her own. It’s a good thing we started this earlier because for several nights she had to all of the setups on her own as I could barely stand up in front of the Cycler.
  3. In times past, I have never been subject to any of the side effects of medicine. Boy, when it came on did it ever! I’m on a strict take my blood pressure in the AM which I do anyway. and if the upper # is 105 or less, do not take the prescribed dose; this morning it was 95 so I didn’t. The moral of this story is that bodies change and we have to be sensitive to what new meds might bring as unexpected.
  4. As dialysis patients, we might experience smooth sailing for months or even years as I did, only to hit a wall. At this point, although previously not required, we need a strong support system to carry us over rocks and shoals.