What Are the Odds?!?

This roadside art, that we see along one of our byways on our barn trips, is a little the way I feel this morning! I decided that perhaps today deserved to be a two-blog day! One covering our last night "experience" and another covering our BIG delivery this afternoon. Last night was interesting to say a the least. It was fairly quiet till around 1am. Woody slept peacefully for a while...during a fill and then a dwell time. The drain time was what started the problems. The first drain took a very long time and he kept getting the message that it was draining too slowly. He wiggled and jiggled and stood and sat and bent and...you get the picture, at least slightly. Finally enough drained that the cycler machine went on to the next fill...no problem, then the dwell...no problem...then the next drain...the same problem as the first except s l o w e r! We gots bells and alarms and warnings, etc.n we kept trying to make him drain...but to no avail. So I decided that it looked like we would have to do a manual drain. Thank goodness I asked the nurse for one at the training yesterday! I had a couple of questions and wanted to check to see if the 24/7 nurse could help me. I know that I started out to call the nurse phone number, but in looking away at the phone and then back, I plugged in a different number. I didn't find out till later that it was then "disaster" phone number...for folk at time of hurricanes, tornados, floods, etc. The young lady who helped me never indicated that I had called the wrong number. She just took me through some steps that might make the drain work better. I tried them all to no avail. At the end of our conversation she said that if we didn't get to a certain number in a certain time then perhaps the manual drain was the answer. I then asked her the question that I had about the manual drain and she said she could only answer cycler machine questions...which made me wonder why a nurse couldn't address either. But still thought that I had called the nurse phone number. So then I went about getting things ready to do the manual drain and Woody kept trying to get more to drain. He was concerned that it was a problem with his catheter. I still hadn't had my manual drain question answered, but I finally figured it out on my own. I continued to get him disconnected from the cycler machine and connected to the manual drain bag. When I unplugged things then the alarm really started sounding and it wouldn't stop with the stop button. So I decided to call the nurse number back...but I should have realized that this time I needed tech support. Hard to think straight under the circumstances of alarms and figuring everything out for the first time on our own! Anyway, the nurse did answer my question about getting the machine shut down and alarm off, but she did tell me that I should call the tech line next time! Yes, mam! She was nice about it and very helpful...just getting that alarm off helped a lot! From there we got the drain bag connected to the extension on Woody's catheter and opened clamps and drain he did! That took a while but no where as long as we had already taken to "try" to drain with the machine. In those moments I couldn't remember the reason that we had to do a manual drain during training. When I finally got the cassette door to unlatch, I remembered...when water came spilling out. We had had a faulty cassette during the training...so what are the odds that we would have another one on our very first night of doing dialysis at home on our own?!? The nurse told us that he had hardly ever had that happen! Oh, well, I guess we are special! At least we got through it, but he still hasn't had a complete dialysis treatment as he only got one bag of solution instead of two. Woody decided that he wanted some juice before he went to bed (5am by this time!), but I guess that was a mistake. Shortly after he got it down it all came back up...so more to clean up. So far today I have done three loads of wash...a quilt that was on the couch for his bedding, lots of towels (both from the leak and Woody getting sick), and a few clothes. I have had to try to clean and dry out the remote that got in the way...oops! So far it isn't working. I had papers and notebooks lined up on the kitchen counters drying out from the water that came out of the machine and "dripped" on them because they were on the shelf under the machine on the cart. As Woody finally was ready to get a coule of hours of sleep, he looked at me and smiled and said, "And,not think we get to do this all over again tonight!" And, it wasn't in a complaining way! My comment was, "Are we having fun yet?" I tried to go back to sleep, but never did...so running on adrenaline until I crash! The BIG delivery is due sometime between noon and 4...so not sure when I will doze...maybe sitting in the chair here in the living room??? I have also called the dialysis nurse, we have been working with, to let him know what wild readings he would be getting. He had planned to call us at 9am to find out.l.i beat him. His reaction was sort of unbelief and sorry that we hadn't and a better experience. He did say that I at least knew that it wasn't something I had done or not done to make the problem happen. I guess those are comforting words! Well, the delivery person for Fresenius just called and he is 30 min away. Off to get our masks. I'll blog later if I can still put one foot in front of the other...of it I can even walk through my house!