Three Days In

Three days into October and it is definitely looking and feeling more like Fall. When I was out and about today, I noticed that the trees are starting to turn. I always look forward to the beautiful fall colors...sometimes we get them and then sometimes they just aren't as pretty as other years. I'm hoping for a beautiful Fall this year. It partially depends on how much rain we have had...lately not a lot but earlier in the summer we got quite a bit. We will see what that bodes for our Fall colors. The reason that I was out and about is that it had been two weeks since I had been to Kroger and it was time to restock. And, restock I did! I was happy that Isaac was out in the yard when I got home. I enlisted his muscles and he brought most of the bags in. I carried a few and he left the eggs and the potatoes for me to bring in at the end. He was a big help. It took quite a while at the store and then quite a bit of time to get everything put in its place once I got home. There is a semblence of order in the kitchen so I must have been mostly successful in finding spots for everything. Woody had been wanting a BLT...so I bought him some turkey bacon which doesn't have all the additives in it and bought low sodium. I think he enjoyed a taste that he had been missing for some time now since he couldn't have tomatoes when we were trying to eat in such a way to keep him off dialysis. We managed to keep him off for 2-1/2 years. So now he is enjoying some of the "no-nos" of that diet. I have a feeling as we go along in this dialysis process "no-nos" will surface again, but at the moment he is enjoying a little more freedom in his eating than he has for a long time. His treatments continue to take shorter times...last night again was under 10 hours. He finished around 2am. I went downstairs and disconnected him and did the post dialysis routine and then headed back upstairs and supposedly to sleep. Was upstairs shortly after 2:30am, but couldn't seem to fall back to sleep so worked on the Sunday School lesson/thoughts. Either Marie or I send out a weekly summary/food for thought about our weekly lessons since we can't meet in person. I am doing them at the moment since Marie is recovering from knee replacement surgery. I got the lesson completed and ready to send, then tried to go back to sleep again. Still couldn't so read for a while till I was ready to doze off. Again, I slept till closer till 8. Woody fixed his own oatmeal and when I got up he and I went over the grocery list. He still is a bit more of a picky eater than he used to be so I want to be sure that what I have planned appeals! I don't like to be left with most of what I have prepared. I like to share in the partaking! We have some yummy things planned for the upcoming two weeks...at least I hope he still thinks they sound yummy when it comes time for me to make them. Tonight's dialysis treatment is going well so far. He has completed the first cycle of four and is probably in his second dwell time...or at least close to it. I came up to blog so don't know exactly where he is. So far tonight...NO ALARMS! Very good. Each night there seem to be fewer and fewer alarms. Either the machine is getting used to the way Woody's body is handling this form of dialysis or Woody's body is getting used to the way the machine works! Either way it is good that things are going more smoothly. I can't believe it but this coming week it will be time to make another order for supplies and then two weeks later the order will arrive. We have used up about all the boxes of the least strong solution so I will be using some from the second shipment soon. I have started using one of the least strong solution and one of the middle strength as he has had some swelling in his ankles. The higher the strength of the solution the more immpurities and the more water is pulled out of his system. 2000 ml of solution is put into him each of the four cycles. Sometimes not all of the 2000ml is drained off...by the end of the four cycles most of the time all the solution is drained and then sometimes more than what was put in is drained off...that is called ultra filtration. The ultra filtration is what pulls off the extra fluid that builds up in his body. Sometimes it can pull off too much and sometimes not enough...it is sort of a balancing act...we don't want him to be dehydrated, but we don't want fluid to build up. I am in charge of keeping an eye on how his body is reacting to the solution strengths and change them up if needed. When he saw Dr. O last we felt he was dehydrated so we decided that we needed to use two bags of the lesser strength solution which we had been doing up until a couple of nights ago and I decided that he might need to have one bag of the middle strength and one of the lesser. I'm not too fond of having to make these decisions, but that it is a decision that falls on my shoulders. I think that things are going fairly well. This coming week, we go back to the Fresenius Kidney center and will take bags of the drain fluid from one night so they can evaluate how his dialysis is doing so far. I'm sure after evaluation we will be told to continue what we are doing or change things up a bit. Time will tell! Be safe! Be well! Be cautious!