Today we had our dialysis seminar. There were 4 couples participating. We were the youngest by a good 20 years.
1. Husband and Wife. They hated each other. She gave him dirty looks and he made questionable comments but acted as though they were questions simply by adding a mental ? to the end of his sentence.
2. The sisters. One fell asleep (I think the one that needs the dialysis) and the other acted like she was on a game show whereby she would win a prize for finishing the presenter's sentences. Though they could be read on the screen.
3. Dad and Daughter. They nodded the entire time and made noises like "umhmmmmm" "oooooh" "ahhhhh" and "wow" to everything. Every. Thing.
4. Me and Erik. We tried to pay attention. We ended up having to face away from each other to avoid make faces and laughing. We passed notes. I jotted down entertaining quotes from the other participants. We were the only group who remembered that this was a dialysis seminar. To learn about dialysis options. Not a general medical convention. Not a personal nutritionist appointment. Not a let's learn some common sense before we open our mouths training session. Dialysis options. That's it.
There are two main types of dialysis with a few options within each type.
I think Erik has decided on the at home option that works overnight. 8-9 hours. Every night. The upside is that one of us can sleep through it completely. The machine is portable. You know, for those times when you want to hook up to a dialysis machine while you are out dancing. Or on vacation. They will actually send all supplies, except the 20 pound machine, anywhere you want if you plan to be out of town etc. The whole thing sounds less than fun, quite frankly, but this sounded like the best option and would get Erik out of clinic visits 4 times a week for 4 hours at a time.
Questions I had:
Does the machine come in a variety of color options? No.
Does the machine make noise. A steady low hum.
Do we get priority boarding? Doubtful.
Erik is going to start the process for dialysis. It is time. But it will take some time. He needs an outpatient procedure to get a port and catheter into his abdomen (if he doesn't want me to discuss details he can take over the blog) and of course that needs to be scheduled a few weeks in advance. He will have to go through 2 weeks of training at the clinic before they will release him to full time home dialysis. Then the fun really begins.
We leave for vacation next week and then Erik and Jack are going to Dallas for the final 4 games at the beginning of April. He will formally begin the process after that time. We have a long weekend trip scheduled for the end of April that has now become tentative but chances are nothing will really happen before then to preclude us from going.
Next up: Transplant evaluation on April 16th, obtain date for outpatient procedure likely for a date in mid April, Amy to make Erik a pretty organized and labeled file folder for all of the documents and information he has compiled as I almost had a breakdown when he handed me a manilla folder filled with haphazardly shoved in reading materials and documents in no particular order and said "you might want to read this" as we were driving to the class. Yes I said manilla folder.
Now. I refer you back to my initial comments about the people in the class. And the fact that the class was only about dialysis options so there would be no reason to make any other comments or raise any unrelated questions, right? Below are some of the quotes I jotted down while trying to focus on not laughing:
"and I drink a lot of water because I like to" - which generated the following response from the presenter: "that's a nice fact about you"
"I've got gaut" - in response to absolutely nothing, he just shared.
"I like corn and that's about it" - no idea what prompted this but this is about the time Erik and I had to alter seating positions so as not to be looking at each other.
"What are your thoughts on caffeine and kidney disease" - while talking about the portable machines.
"Have you heard the latest…" - this statement proceeded a variety of nonsensical comments that ended with a "umhmmmmm" or a "wow" used interchangeably.
"My wife is really mad that she has to cook me good food." - not said by Erik, and I believe it was in response to the corn comment.
Don't be jealous of our day.
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