Finally Friday

Today being Friday means two days off from dialysis. Today went so-so...took two sticks and Davida's help for the first (arterial) stick and then 2nd stick went in easily but ended up against a wall of the graft so had to reposition it...took a while..but once they were in and positioned, the rest of the treatment went smoothly. Davida and I have a plan for Monday. I will get everything ready and plan to place the needles around 8am when she gets to the dialysis clinic so if I have problems she will head my way. That way I am on my own, but still have a backup fairly near. One reason that I may have had problems this morning was that I felt pressure tonget the sticks done fairly quickly as I had gotten a call from the home health nurse and she wanted to come at 1pm which would cut it very close since I was waiting on Davida till I did the cannulating. So I was trying to do the sticks quicker than I usually do. Well, that backfired on me and it probably took about the longest that it had. Davida suggested that we just do a two hour treatment today sunce he had had four 3-hour treatments this week. So I took him off at 1pm and the nurse arrived before we had the needles out. We also had problems with bleeding after taking the needles out today. So all in all not the best dialysis day...but it is over and we are through with dialysis for this week and have Sunday, our usual day off, too. The nurse was here almost an hour. She did a telemed visit with the wound doctor. They made a few decisions about how to deal with his two wounds that we are trying to get to heal. I'm not thrilled that I am now a wound care nurse for the days when the nurse doesn't come. Shortly after the nurse left, we got ready to head to our local hospital to have bloodwork done for his Vanderbilt infectious disease doctor. One of the antibiotics that Woody is taking needs watching through bloodwork. So we are going once a week till we see her on the 22nd. Once again, it was an easy in and out at the hospital...Friday afternoons are definitely a good time to go for labs. I got a notification from the MyHealthatVanderbilt app, that the results of the labs have already been posted. We were home in less than an hour from when we left, but Woody was pretty done in and ready to head to couch. Not long after he got home he got sick...so...he has not been interested in food this afternoon or evening...once again...he only ate breakfast. Hard to get meat back on his bones at this rate with him feeling like he can't eat lunch or supper. Maybe a more relaxed weekend will help. We'll see! I do several maintenance chores on the dialysis machines on the tenth of each month. I have done teo of them, but the third requires the vacuum and I felt like running the vacuum would disturb Woody. So plan to do that task in the morning. Melany is coming for a visit in the morning...needs to check on her daddy! Nathan came this morning a out the time we were getting underway for dialysis to fix the bathroom faucet. He had to go get a couple of parts and then was successful at stopping the leak from the handle. Good job, Nathan! Thanks! All in all it has been a pretty busy day! To be continued! Be safe! Be well! Be cautious!