Training for Home Hemo-Dialysis

We've been training for home hemo-dialysis for what feels like months and months now. When my husband went into the hospital at the end of April with failing kidneys, they put him on dialysis right away. He had an emergency catheter placed in his neck. Later, a more permanent one was placed in his chest. When he was released from the hospital in early May, we started our training for home dialysis right away.

Training consists of going to a clinic four times a week and working with a nurse to learn the dialysis machine, catheter care, and bandage change. Previous to that, a home health nurse visited our home and a technician came as well to take water samples and see where we wanted to set up all the equipment. Good news is our water passed the choramine test. Chloramines are poisonous if introduced to the bloodstream and still have to be tested every time you make a new dialysate pack. But here we are mid-June still waiting for home setup.

It will be nice have our home set up. We travel a lot and understand that we can take our home setup on the road so long as we have enough travel packs. And if we want to go on vacation, we can have the travel packs delivered to the hotel where we plan on staying. In an emergency situation (like no electricity, no water, death in the family, etc), we can do in center dialysis in another city. I feel like all the stars aligned inspite of a life and death situation. And the doctors and nurses are incredibly supportive. Even if we choose to go off dialysis and go on hospice care, they respect our decision. Not that we're doing that, but it's nice to know they respect people's choices.

We do have an upcoming appointment with the transpant center in our local city. It feels very daunting and unreal at times. I understand that the local hospital is not part of the National Kidney Registry so I need to figure that out. The NKR has a wider reach and, if we qualify for a new kidney, he could get one faster that way. But on the other hand, a lot of patients at our local clinic have been receiving transplants. 

So for now, we'll continue to train and come home with our equipment. He looks better and is getting around better already in just a short time. I will continue to work on a kidney friendly diet and we'll start to implement exercise as he can tolerate it. 

If anyone reads this and been through this process, I would love to chat!