Dialysis Education

Hi Guys,
It’s me, Mike.

We had a pretty busy week last week. Diane covered the first part of the week with you, so I’ll see what I can do to bring you up to speed on the second half of the week.

On Thursday, the 13th , Diane, Belanna and I, along with Sandra, went to the dialysis place for some education. The education session took a little over and hour and a half. Afterwards, we got a tour of the actual dialysis room.

What we learned;
There are five stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD). They are,

Stage 1. Kidney damage (protein in urine) with a kidney filtration rate of 90%

Stage 2. Kidney damage with a filtration rate of 60 to 89 %

Stage 3. Moderate decrease in kidney filtration of 30 to 59 %. ( Note; Diane was at 30% when Belanna was born. That was June 2002.)

Stage 4. Severe reduction of kidney filtration. 15 to 29%.

Stage 5. Kidney failure. Less than 15% kidney filtration function.

Diane is currently rated at less than 10%.

There are two types of treatments for people in stage 5 CKD (chronic kidney disease).

Kidney transplant, and or dialysis.

There are two types of kidney dialysis. They are
1. Hemodialysis and
2. Peritoneal dialysis.

1. Hemodialysis is where you go to a clinic and hook up two (2) tubes to your veins. ( an inflow, and an outflow). You are hooked up to a machine through the tubes. The blood is pumped out of one tube, and into the machine for a wash, and then back into your body through the other tube. Estimated time is 4 hours, three times a week. (Another note: there is a way a person can get the equipment to do this at home, but at this point, its all too new to us. So we’ll just focus on the clinic style).

There will need to be some minor surgery to affix access points for the tubes. There are three types of access points. They are,
1. A fistula
2. A graft
3. A catheter
The fistula and graft can be connected to the arm or sometimes the leg.
The catheter is a soft tube that is inserted into the neck or chest.

From what we understand, the fistula is the safest and most durable. So, I think Diane has decided on getting a fistula. Although she could change her mind if more information becomes available. She is a woman after all.



2. Peritoneal dialysis.
Peritoneal dialysis is a method of cleaning the toxins out of the body without your blood leaving your body. It’s a method where a solution is pumped into your stomach cavity and draws the toxic waste out of the blood through the blood veins in the stomach lining. When the solution has had a time to work, (several hours) you drain it out, and pump new solution back in. You do that over and over forever.

Well folks, there’s more, but I’m getting pretty tired about now and need to get to sleep. 4:00 am comes awful early so I’m going to post this part now and hopefully finish up tomorrow.

See ya,
Mike

PS. Is anyone reading this? I really can’t tell if you’re interested or if I’m doing a good job at writing this stuff for you. I think I hear you breathing, but I’m not positive.

Leave a comment or two and let me know.