Today was one of our days off this week. The trouble with days off is that you have to cram in doctor appointments and other things that need to be done. Today was our first monthly visit at the Fresenius Kidney Center here in Tullahoma. We saw Woody's nurse, the social worker, the nutritionist, and his nephrologist, Dr. O. Everyone was happy with our progress. The doctor said "an I told you so" to me in regards to the fact that he had told me a month ago that I could be the care partner so Woody could have hemodialysis at home. We also said good bye to Woody's PD nurse, who is moving to Louisiana. He is getting trained to be a nurse for home hemodialysis. I told him that PD is easier! Another interesting fact about today's date: we bagan peritoneal dialysis training two years ago this date...and, have now moved on to the next phase of dialysis. These appointments at the center that involve the doctor end up being long...starting with waiting in the car till they call you in. There is no waiting room in this part of the building...so our cars are the waiting room. I chose the earliest appointment that we were offered hoping that the appointments wouldn't be too backed up. But we were still away from the house for two hours...and our travel time is only 10 minutes there and 10 minutes back...the rest of that time was either spent in the car or in the center. I learned that I needed to contact the company for my supply order...funny thing about that...my phone rang while we were with the doctor and I ignored it. Come to find out it was the supply part of the organization calling for my order. Just as Woody sat back down in his recliner upon our return, the phone rang and it was the hospital in Murfreesboro ready for him to answer all the questions that they need answers for prior to a surgery. That took a "few" minutes and when he had hung up, I called to make the supply order. It's handled a bit differently than PD supplies are handled. This was totally an automated call. I have mixed feelings about that as I couldn't ask questions. But it is nice not to have to be left on hold for long periods of time! I had to tell them to the piece what we have on hand...not number of boxes. That was different and at this point I don't know exactly how many are in a carton. These are just the large supplies that go with the dialysis machine...no not a large number of items in this order as there were in the PD orders. The medical supplies are handled by the nurses. Once we had lunch, I headed off to the grocery store. Shopped, came home, put groceries away...and...then napped!!! I'm still liking my new chair! We have had supper and our day off is waning. Dialysis duties will greet us once again in the morning. I will say that it is nice to have two days off out of seven to use to order our lives around. And, it is nice that these days off are flexible. We will do dialysis tomorrow and Saturday this week. Then next week will start off this time with a dialysis day on Sunday (a day we plan to usually have off). We will do his dialysis after we get home from church...probably after lunch since he isn't supposed to eat during dialysis. I can get to the point of getting ready for him to be connected, feed him lunch, and then get him connected after lunch. Then it's three hours of monitoring the treatment (I'm not supposed to do any dozing! So much for a nice Sunday afternoon nap!). But nice that the treatment doesn't have to be at an exact time...we do have some flexibility as long as we fit it in. We are doing the treatment on our usual planned day off so we can get up at dark thirty and head to the hospital in Murfreesboro...approximately a one-hour drive. Then who knows when the surgery will actually be. We were told that it is about a two-hour surgery. We "could" be back home at a decent hour in the afternoon...but knowing how things go in a hospital we WON'T hold our breaths!!! We'll get home when we get home! Be safe! Be well! Be cautious!
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