I had one long, dreary day in dialysis today. It was literally like one freaking disaster after another. Now I’m not one to usually write a rant, but I just have to blog about this to get it out of my system.
I usually run on the dialysis machine for three hours and I spent the first hour of my treatment in pain. Apparently the bottom of the two needles--two needles go in my arm to circulate the blood back and forth--wasn’t really working right and when the nurses started fiddling and effin’ with it, it hit a nerve or something and I started crying it hurt so much. And it really made me upset because I take time in the morning to my make up on right so I look presentable, since my looks are all I have left from my darn kidneys robbing me of my health. It really plucked my nerves I wound up crying it all over, with mascara stinging my eyes.
So the bottom needle had to be taken out and another needle was put in--yeah I was stuck three times with a needle the size of a toothpick.
(This is the needle used on me. I get two--or more if the nurse can't get it right. And that's the needle compared to the ink tube of a ink pen. I think I posted this same pic on my FB! LOL! )
I wanted to go home then, because had screamed and cried in pain, but my dad begged me to stay on, and I did, even though I wanted to pick up and run away from the damned place.
I went on with the treatment and maybe an hour before it was over, I started feeling sick, so I asked to be taken off.
This is where I really got my last good nerve danced on.
The nurse taking care of me is this big, sloppy thing, who isn’t that much older than me and who hasn’t been working at the facility I go to for maybe a month.
And the bee-yotch acts like she knows everything about the dialysis business, but every so often she has to ask one of her superiors about what do, help me, how does this work?
When treatment is over, the nurse is supposed to use saline to help send your blood back to your body, and clamp off four little clamps, take the plastic lines run ning between you and the machine off and pull the needles and bandage you up.
So the girl was clamping all the damn clamps and left one unclamped by mistake.
All I did was reach down and clamp the thing. I had done it hundreds of times with other nurses with no problem.
Not with Swamp Thing. Lord, you’d have thought I’d slapped her or something the way she carried on.
“Don’t do that! I didn’t go to school for them people to see you clamping that thing!”
She acted like I was messing with the machine or something. I closed a one inch clamp on my own arm!
And for the record, it’s not that difficult to get a degree in dialysis technician work anyway. It only takes three months. She’s acting like she’s a surgeon and I cut her patient open with a scalpel.
It was ridiculous and it rubbed me all the wrong ways.
And furthermore, it’s SATURDAY! None of her over bosses are going to come in, they never do on the weekend, and much less on a holiday weekend. I imagine her bosses are on a beach somewhere barbecuing a slab of beef and not giving a hoot in hell about her.
She got lucky because she doesn’t know how close she came to getting cursed out and her ass handed to her on a platter.
Really. I’m 25 years old and I’ve been around the dialysis stuff for 2 years, much longer than her. And I’ve done plenty more than her. I can kind of work the machines myself and even bandage up my arm. (I took care of my mother for over ten years before she died 3 years ago and I am an EXPERT at wound prepping. An EXPERT. I took care of everything from open sores to her stumps after her legs were amputated. I know what the hell I’m doing.)
Just really got on my last nerve. When a person is in a medical facility, they wanted to be looked after and treated with respect. Just because I happen to have shrunken kidneys doesn’t make me any less of a human. I’m just a human with a minor health malady, that’s all.
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