Dialysis for Jim has been going really well. That is until last night. While Jim some times has pain during the initial draining process, last night he was experiencing excruciating pain with both the fills and the drains. So bad it brought tears to his eyes. Knowing something wasn't right, when his cycle ended at 6:00 am we immediately called his PD nurse. She wanted him to do a manual exchange to see if the drain fluid was cloudy. If so, this meant he had peritonitis (an infection in the peritoneal cavity-not a good thing). Fluid was clear which is good. Peritonitis was ruled out.
She wanted to see him at the clinic.Upon examining him, their 2nd option was that his catheter had flipped. To confirm this an x-ray was done at the hospital. Yes indeed, his catheter had flipped which was the cause of the pain. Not sure why or what caused this, but is fairly common in PD patients. Solution - go in with a wire through the catheter and reposition it.
So tomorrow, Jim will have outpatient surgery to correct his catheter. No dialysis until maybe Sunday or Monday night. Since his potassium is good and he is still able to pee, he should be fine with no dialysis for a couple days.
In the meantime for the next few nights, Jim can sit in his chair and fall asleep watching TV, he can sleep without having a tube extending from his belly, he can sleep without the humming of a machine, he can sleep without having an electric blanket to keep him warm, he can sleep without the beeping of alarms going off, he can get up and go to the bathroom without gathering up his 10 ft. of tubing, and he can sleep with the comfort of both dogs lying next to him . I think he will sleep well....
