Fluid dynamics

When you’re on kidney dialysis you develop a fixation for drinks. It’s just like when you’re on a diet and you cut out chocolate and chips – all you crave is chocolate and chips. Well when you’re on a fluid restriction (1 litre ... 1000 mls ... 1¾ pints ... not very much) you crave a drink and it sucks. See, the first verb that popped into my head was ‘to suck’.

There’s fluid in just about everything you eat never mind drink – fruit, veggies, pasta, rice, soup, ice-cream, custard, gravy, jelly, yogurt – you need to be aware of the fluid content and count that into your allowance. It's like shooting the rapids.

The renal diet is also pretty restrictive especially when combined with a diabetic diet but the food has always been the least of my worries. You can buy sugar free alternatives for most things, you can take tablets to absorb much of the phosphates in meat, dairy, soy, fish, nuts, etc, you can find lower potassium fruits & veg or boil them into submission but you just can’t get drinks that are low in H2O.

Just lately I've been drowning in fluid insults, here's a few that have been floating around lately.

What’s worse than having a UTI? Having a UTI when you don’t have much U in the first place and you can't drink buckets of Robinson's Barley Water to flush it out.

As if being diabetic and having kidney failure isn’t enough, I’m starting to experience problems with me women’s bits as I get older so I have to have an ultrasound in a couple of days just to make sure I don’t have fibroids or worse. The appointment letter said I should drink 1 pint of fluid an hour before the scan and arrive with a full bladder. Ha! I could drink a gallon of water (I could, really) but hardly any is going to make it through to my bladder.

I have a follow-up appointment with the gynaecologist a couple of days after the scan. The appointment letter said to bring an early morning sample of urine. Lucky they don’t say how big the sample should be but I might be able to manage a couple of teaspoonsful.

And who says Germans don’t have a sense of humour? Not only do they engineer terrific cars and roads to drive them on, they are also the world leaders in making dialysis machines. A company called Fresenius actually owns many of the dialysis units in the UK, they are staffed with NHS nurses & doctors but Fresenius provide the consumables, facilities and the training.

Some of their newer machines have fancy alarms that sound when you’ve finished your session, mine being an older one it just says boop-boop-boop over and over which is unimaginative but functional. When I had my line changed last week I had to dialyse at Addenbrooke’s and the machine I used was one of the newer ones. When I finished it started to play a movement from Handel’s Water Music. If that isn’t taking the piss I don’t know what is.

Jerry! Jerry!

I get such a kick out of reviewing the statistics on my site meter. It's not the numbers that does it although yesterday I got 27 hits as opposed to the normal average of 17. Go me! I love having a nosey at what brought the reader to my corner of the blogosphere.

Soggy Pussy gets a lot of action, as does Big Prick of course and I snigger gently to myself when I imagine the fully charged, exploding with testosterone teen disappointedly reading about cats or injections. But whilst perusing the info this morning I came across a rather plaintive search from the US and I fear there may be a couple gearing up for an appearance on Jerry Springer.

"a man has type b blood and his wife has type a blood. they bring home a new baby from the hospital. on a visit to their doctor two weeks later they discover their baby has type o blood."

Oh dear.

Uncivil engineering

We have no heating in our building at work. Well actually we have a boiler and radiators but they don't do anything at the moment. The radiators are those heavy cast iron things that look like whale ribs and pre-date the war and I'm not talking about the Gulf War or even the Great War, I'm talking the Crimean War. Most of the radiators have been retrofit at some point and have temperature/on/off controls on them but not the one in my office. The one in my office doesn't have such new fangled niceties, you have to turn mine on or off with a spanner.

Of course being a government building the central heating goes on and off on specific days of the year regardless of the outside weather conditions and earlier this year come about May, it was sweltering outside but the heat was still on so I had to do my magic with the monkey wrench. Either that or bring some birch twigs to work to thrash the First Sergeant with. That's not a bad idea anyway, I'll try to remember that one.

So, this year when October the 16th rolled around it had already been pretty cold so I was glad to be able to crank that err not-quite-a-knob and get some heat coming through. Unfortunately the water from the radiator started to ooze out of the err not-quite-a-knob thing. It seemed to settle down after a while so I just thought the system needed bleeding and had sorted itself out.

Last Monday I had to go in to work when everyone else was off enjoying a belated Veteran's Day day off. I noticed a dark patch under one of the sofas and concluded that the radiator had been leaking rather a lot more than I thought. Oops. Since I was not expecting to see anyone before my surgery I left a note for the boss and scarpered.

This week the heat isn't working at all so we had the building manager put a work order in to the Civil Engineers Squadron who manage all the estates maintenance (I'm keeping everything crossed that it hasn't gone tits up because of the leak in my office). Someone came out today to have a look. Do you know what the guy's diagnosis was?

"Uh, yeah, it's broken"

Really? Gosh. And all this time I've been twiddling my monkey wrench wondering what the problem was.

Dinner for two?

It's been fairly dull here at Casa di Calamity just lately and although this blog is called Medication Time I am leery of turning into a medical bore and I'm having trouble keeping to my resolution to write more often without resorting to writing about my health issues. So when I read Rachel's account of the demise of an unwelcome house guest I was reminded of something that happened a few years ago in the company of my dearly departed old moggies Wuggy and Pud'n.



Wuggy aka Mr Puff and Pud'n aka Fifi Pud'n-tops (c'mon, everyone gives their pets daft pet names in addition to daft proper names ... don't they?) brother and sister, died within 6 months of each other aged 16 about 5 years ago now. Wuggy had cancer in his mouth and Pud'n developed kidney, thyroid & liver failure after having her teeth cleaned under general anaesthetic.

They were a special pair of cats, very loving and became my surrogate children after Henry died so I was devastated when their time came to an end. Unlike the 2 we have now they weren't a huge threat to the local wildlife. Pud'n liked occasionally to catch a baby rabbit and chew its hind legs off in the cloakroom and Wuggy was a great believer in catch & release. More than once we would have to chase his guests around the hall. Once we were plagued by the most revolting smell that got worse day by day - it turned out to be dead mousie gently mouldering under the washing machine. Bless.

One day I discovered one of our padded placemats was frayed and shedding its stuffing. I thought it must have got stuck in the drawer and ripped at some point. Then I started noticing tiny brown lumps on the worktops in the kitchen. At first I thought it was coffee granules, I thought maybe my Dad had spilled some when he was housesitting one day. Now in my defence I'm not a coffee drinker but all the same you might want to ask for tea if you ever come round for a cuppa because those brown lumps turned out to be mouse shit.

The thing that really gave the game away was when I pulled a brand new packet of Digestives out of the larder cupboard and discovered a very neat hole that went right through the packaging and the biscuits - it was like someone had taken an ice cream scoop and carved out the biscuits.

Imagine the scene back at Mouseville. Mrs Mouse meets her mate at door

"Now then Murgatroyd, hasta had a good day at t'biscuit mine?"

"Ee bah gum lass, ah've had a grand day but that seam o' Digestives collapsed today"

"By 'eckerslike, it didn't!?"

"Aye, lass, almost crushed me under all that wholesome goodness and dunkability. Ah'll 'ave to move on to t'chocolate Hobnobs afore long"

The kitchen was scrubbed inside and out and several mouse traps were purchased, baited with chocolate and generally ignored by the mouse population. We assumed Murgatroyd must have moved out because we didn't find any more evidence of him for several days.

One evening Pud'n was sitting in front of the gas fire in the living room. It wasn't lit so she wasn't sitting there for warmth but she certainly seemed interested in it for some reason. She wouldn't budge so Capt Scarlet decided to have a look at what she was so taken with. With a torch he spied a pair of beady black eyes staring back at him.

"A mouse!" he cried and proceeded to dismantle the fire. This of course prompted the mouse to scurry away and hide while the Capt poked the void behind the fire with whatever he had to hand. Pud'n lost interest and left the room.

The mouse snuck out of a gap and scarpered for a corner while I tried to catch him. He managed to do an entire circuit of the room with us pouncing and moving furniture but to no avail. He made it back to the gas fire. We went out for a KFC.

When we brought the food back we plonked ourselves in front of the TV to eat and after a while Murgatroyd crept out from his hidey hole and started nibbling something on the carpet. When we moved he scurried back to safety.

We started eating again, he crept out of his hole and started eating too. I went over to see what he had found and it turned out to be some kernels of sweetcorn (OK I am officially the world's worst housekeeper - I couldn't remember the last time we ate sweetcorn). I went into the kitchen and dug out a huge plastic salad bowl, crept back into the room and made myself as inconspicuous as possible. Sure enough, Murgatroyd crept out from his lair again and I plopped the salad bowl down over him. My patented humane spider catching technique apparently works on small mammals too!

At this point the cats wandered back in the room to see if there were any hot wings left and they couldn't believe their eyes when they saw little Murgatroyd sitting in his plastic Thunderdome calmly munching bits of sweetcorn and being incontinent in a way that only mice seem to be able to. We let them study him for a couple of minutes while we took photos and had a good giggle and then I slid an old calendar under the bowl and took him outside to release him. A mouse tale with a happy ending!



(Click on the pictures to get a bigger frame)

Jeux sans frontières

Judgemental isn't usually a state I find myself in, my motto normally being 'Live and let live' but I'm going to have another mini rant now.

I'm sure 85% of bloggers, if they're honest, will have visited Belle de Jour (her blog of course, we know she only makes housecalls) if only to see what all the fuss is about. I have, in fact I recently purchased Belle's book (I think everyone's blog should be available in paperback - it's so much more convenient for catching up on past posts and we should all be paid for the entertainment we provide). Let's leave aside whether we believe any of it is actually true or not, let's ignore for a moment its subject matter. Let's focus instead on where I bought it for the bargain price of £4.99: Sainsburys.

Yes a no holds barred, explicit account of 6 months in a London call girl's life is available in your local family supermarket. Now let's go back to the subject matter, how to fist/rim/bugger/all-of-the-above-in-combination-with-a-cucumber comfortably and professionally is on the shelf without so much as a parental guidance sticker.

I knew it would be saucy but I didn't expect it to be as explicit, I thought it would be tamed somehow. At least the TV show is on after the watershed and is G rated. I bought the book because I think bloggers deserve some compensation/recognition and it is far easier to tote a paperback around than a laptop even with wi-fi. I also thought it would be a jolly wheeze to leave something with a picture of a scantily clad Billie Piper (Billie Piper? Puhlease) in the communal library at the dialysis unit when I was finished with the book. Now I'm not so sure, I may be single-handedly responsible for a reduction in the burden of the elderly on the state pension.

I don't consider myself a prude otherwise I wouldn't have bought the book, but I do worry about what effect it could have on a minor. I remember vividly being about 12 and after rooting around in my brother's bedroom (illicitly of course, yes I was one of those horrible little sisters) I came across his collection of topshelf magazines. I remember being at once fascinated and disgusted but it's not the photos that haunt me, it's the letters from the readers. Somehow putting slightly aberrent practices and fantasies into print is more disturbing than pictures. Bugger, I used the word aberrent, I must be a prude after all, just call me Mary Whitehouse

Land of soap and Maury

What is it with daytime TV? Do the producers assume that people who watch TV during the day are brain dead? Jerry Springer? Jeremy Kyle? Maury Povich? I'm stuck at home feeling unable to lift anything heavier than a remote control and you give me show after show about girls who are trying to figure out who actually fathered their children. This last one had 9 men tested but not one of them was the Daddy. 9!! Don't these people have any self-respect? Why air your fishy laundry on national television?

Is it that these shows and the low lifes on them are supposed to make us feel better about our miserable lives stuck at home in front of the telly? I demand to know what happened to A Country Practice, Take The High Road and Crown Court? Quality Shirl, quality.

Smarter than the average bear

Here's a little tribute to someone who never fails to bring a smile to my face these days, Bob T Bear (Esq.), bear, agony uncle, spy, connoisseur of chocolate peanuts, friend. In fact when I was on my way home from the hospital yesterday for some reason I kept thinking about a video Bob made of himself setting some marigolds free. Every time I thought of him in his shiny red wellies it made me giggle out loud which was quite a feat considering the 14-hour trial that the day turned out to be.

Bob - this is a test to see if your instructions work:



Yep, Bob you're definitely smarter than the average bear!

White lines (now we're having fun baby)

I was supposed to have my chest line replaced today but as it turned out I had it replaced yesterday so I'm currently sitting on a lovely padded cloud of codeine & paracetamol waiting for Captain Scarlet to come home and wash my hair for me.

When I arrived at dialysis yesterday morning they couldn't get blood to flow through the line to the machine so I had to trip on over to Addenbrooke's to have a new line fitted. Now this is the catheter that goes into the skin above my right boob, tunnels up under the skin towards my collarbone and then dips down into my subclavian vein. It gets stitched in where it enters the skin and there's another incision just on my collarbone where they open up the skin in order to pull and push it to where it's supposed to go. It's literally my lifeline because without it I can't have dialysis.

It's not the first time I've have one replaced, when I first started dialysis I had a different line. For the first month while there are still stitches holding everything in place in you're not allowed to get the stitches wet. When my stitches came out I celebrated with a long hot shower, keeping dressings and gauze on to stop surprisingly dirty soap (you really don't want to know what lives in your soap) getting into the wounds.

Afterwards I had to remove the dressings to clean everything with antiseptic and replace with clean dry dressings. Well I couldn't get off the gauze that was taped to the end of the catheter, so I decided to cut the tape off. Unfortunately I managed to cut off one of the lumens (the end of the catheter has two limbs or lumens - one for blood to go out to the dialyser, one for the cleaned blood to come back to me). Fortunately I cut it below the clamp or else I would have either bled to death on the bathroom floor or inhaled an air embolism into my heart. Sobering stuff (and kept the chopped off end as a talisman ... I know I'm a weirdo, but hey what can ya do. BTW check out the fabric on my desk chair mrrrreow).



So back to yesterday, the blocked line had been in my chest for 19 months and it was fairly well embedded so removing it and replacing with another was a pretty unpleasant experience ... under a local anaesthetic I might add. Long story short, much pushing and shoving later I was operational again. I'm sore and stiff, I have a huge swelling and the makings of an enormous bruise and I'm encased in clear adhesive dressings which I'm not looking forward to having ripped off tomorrow when everything gets checked and cleaned. But what's really irritating me is that I can't wash my own hair, I can't wait until Capt S comes home.

PS - I forgot to update you all on the whole live donor saga. Capt S has type O blood which means he's the "universal donor" and I, with my type AB blood am the "universal recipient". We're still waiting for tissue typing and cross matching to be completed before we see just how much of a perfect match we are for each other, but the preliminary results are looking promising.

And now for something completely different

Braaaaaiiiins!!

PS - I can't figure out how to embed a video from YouTube instead of posting a link. Hints on a postcard please.

Blame it on the Dougie

Poor Dougal hasn't had a good week either. We got home one day this week to discover that someone had detonated a poo bomb in his drawers and he was smothered all over his tail, belly and knickerbockers. I don't know whether it was the sunshine, the moonlight or the good times but he stank to high heaven and was a walking biological hazard, he was covered in weaponized pootonium

Since Dougal and his sister have very long dense fur they do suffer from the occasional dingleberry (such a cute word for a nasty object) which we are usually able to clip out but this stuff was spread too far and too thick. Time for a bath.

Dougal doesn't like baths. Dougal's a powerful cat with paws like bear claws and teeth that Jaws would be proud of. Dougal wasn't happy.

Neither was CJ. CJ has a tendency towards retching when confronted with nasty smells. CJ can't help it. CJ can't retch quietly.

It was a cold frosty night, the kind of night where sounds are crystal clear and travel for miles. RAHHHHHrrrrruuuuGGHHHHHH!!!! Said CJ. MEooOOooooUUuuuuEEEOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!! Replied Dougie. We continued in this vein for about an hour (it took 2 baths to get him fresh and clean again and it was almost 24 hours before he dried out properly) with lights going on in windows up and down the street.

We have incidentally now withdrawn from the Popular Neighbour of the Month Competition.

Hurrumph

I've had a trying couple of weeks and I'm back in the black hole of depression again. Dialysis treatments have been terrible lately, neither my line (the catheter in my chest) nor needling my fistula is working particularly well. In fact the fistula clotted on Saturday and my line is partially blocked so things are so bad that I was booked in to have surgery to fix everything today. The surgery got cancelled so I can look forward to another shitty treatment tomorrow followed by a general anaesthetic and a lengthy operation probably on Friday.

Additionally I appear to have lost a friend and I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is that I've done or not done. Made an appalling breach in phone etiquette apparently. There was a strange blog post that's gone now but I've puzzled and worried over it for a couple of days, attempted to make contact but now can only conclude that it was directed at me even though some of the clues don't quite add up to events how I remember them. They say if the cap fits wear it, well I'm wearing this one but it doesn't suit me.