I had a scary session last night.
This was the night of the center holiday party... so I thought everything would be easy, but No!
First, the technicians were having a hard time finding a good spot to insert the needles. When Lem finally inserted the needle, the one attached to the vein was not working. Jen, my assigned technician for the evening, pressed a couple of buttons on the machine and managed to unblock it. However, a few moments later, that needle started to vibrate in my veins. OMG!
Jen pulled the needle out a little bit, and things were fine!
About an hour later, I started getting really really bad leg cramps. At first I thought it was just one of my cramp attacks, but the flex-point exercise which I usually do is not working. Jen said that this is natural because the dialysis process removes all the excess fluids, and sometimes patients get dehydrated. Jen added more saline and helped me flex my feet. It was really scary and extremely painful to have both your legs cramping. I was in so much pain, that I was yelling for help! I was getting short of breath, my heart was racing. Having the saline eventually helped... but after that, I just chilled out the rest of the evening: no more multitasking, just vegging out! I am not sure how long that pain lasted, but it seemed like forever!
The next incident was when we were putting the final bandages. Removing those needles are such a big relief... its like having that first breath after you've been holding it for two and a half hours. We did the bandages as normal and applied pressure to both of them. However, after a few minutes blood started squirting out of the artery! OK - that was really scary... it only lasted for one or two seconds, but it looked like I was losing so much blood and nothing can stop it.
Jen said that we need to apply more pressure to stop the blood flow. My husband and I pressed on that bandage so hard that my arm started to hurt. I don't care... I just hope that it fixes the problem. Whew!
I think that is enough excitement for one evening. It was such a draining night, and my husband and I just wanted to go home after that. I hope I will have enough energy to dance tomorrow for our hula show. I've been looking forward to that for months!
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