Look at this as an unstructured chat about whatever comes to mind that’s taking place in my universe as we speak.
Yesterday Fresenius made a delivery of Dialysate for the next thirty days. They started with the delivery of several boxes of manual Dialysate, which is not usable in the Liberty Cycle Dialysis Machine I am currently using. I had to refuse delivery, get on the line with Fresenius Custom Service, and reorder several boxes of Dialysate. What happened doesn’t matter. Perhaps I screwed up the order when I placed it using the PatientHub app, or Fresenius. Regardless, a corrected order is now scheduled for 3/27/23. My Dialysis Nurse through the backdoor got involved and called to make certain I have enough Dialysate to last until delivery which I think I do.
The bottom line here is that Fresenius is taking care of me. I have seen gripes that Fresenius is not responsive which I find NOT to be the case.
For the past five nights, I have not received ANY Drain Alarms!!!!! So what is different? After constant probing by my Dialysis Team, I finally started taking MiraLAX daily. I took the cover off the plastic line leading from the Cycler to my catheter, and I rerouted the line on my stomach that leads from the catheter outbound to the Cycler – three changes that appear to be working. I’ll keep you posted. Hope I haven’t jinxed my current success by reporting the same.
I’ve been thinking about Mindfulness, and how we can apply this concept to our daily lives. As a starting point, during my morning walk with our Golden Retriever Dickens, I have with malice of forethought paused several times, just to “smell a rose,” listen to morning sounds of birds chirping, mowers mowing, PickleBall balls going whack, and in general, being more observant and at peace with our surroundings. It is working. I seem to be less tense and more in tune with nature.
Speaking of Nature, we have an Egyptian Goose that has laid eggs on the roof dormer over our master bedroom. The pair paraded around our and our neighbor’s yards for several weeks. They went missing for several days, and a neighbor who faces our bedroom side of the house said he has been watching them come and go on the leaf and stick nest they mashed up on our roof. Looks like we will be blessed with little geese running around our yard in the near future. Worse things could certainly happen.
Lastly, before my kidney failure, my fighting weight was around 162 pounds, and stayed there for years and years. As my kidneys started failing and my eGFR became lower and lower, I started losing weight. Just before I started Dialysis, I was down to 137 pounds. Once I started on Dialysis, initially I did not gain any appreciable weight. In the last month or so, I have been able to start gaining weight again and am up to about 150 pounds. There is a God.
Leave a Reply