Typical!

So, you know I said after my first 2 hour session on the machine that I hoped the rest would go as smoothly....

I arrived for my second session on Wednesday morning, bright and early.  I'd gone on my own as Hari had to work.  The walk to the department took quite a while from my car with my walker and I was more than a bit knackered when I got there.

An Irish male nurse took me through and got set up but after a poke & a prod of my veins, a listen with the doppler machine, he decided to go and get someone else to put the needles in.  A senior nurse (I think) came and had 3 attempt to do the needles but each time the fistula blew.  The nurses around me constantly reassured me that this can happen and usually does, as the fistula is new and hasn't been needled before and will toughen up the more its needled.  This didn't sound like a good outlook to me - 'you're arm doesnt like needles being stuck in it so we need to stick more in to get it used to it'....

After the second needle and a bucket full of tears, my arm started to bruise quite badly and swell up.  She tried a third but that also blew the fistula so it was taken out and it was decided to send me home.  Once Hari arrived, he drove me home.  I was thoroughly despondent & not at all hopeful.

My arm straight after the needling attempts

The bruising the next day

The next session was the Saturday, again we were there for 7.30am and had a very anxious hours wait to go through.  Again it was a disaster and only one needle was tried as my arm was so incredibly sore and I got myself in a bit of a state.  The nurse sought advice & came back saying that they weren't going to try again in my arm.  They would take a blood test (from my non-bruised arm) and if those results came back showing that my function had decreased I would have to go back in and have a line put in my groin to be given the dialysis through.  If they came back ok, then I would come back next week to try again.  I just wanted out of there!!

So we came home.  Moving about was very hard to do with an arm which hurt to even shift it from one position to another but to use it to lean on my trolley of stick to get upstairs to the loo was agony so I stayed on the sofa for a few hours feeling proper sorry for myself.

Early in the afternoon, the hospital rang to say my levels were ok and to come back Tuesday morning for the next session.  I was more than happy with that....