4th time... or not...

I was finally set up to start my treatments at my local clinic!  Yay!!!  My schedule will eventually be Tues, Thurs, and Sat at 11:30 am.  I arrived on Tuesday at 10:30 because there was a mountain of paperwork to fill out and after all that, I was shown to my chair.

At this point, my arm looked like this:

Obviously some bruising and so forth from the difficult time they had on the previous Friday and Saturday at the hospital.  

My whole arm throbbed and was even a bit swollen.  That made an already difficult job that much harder.  The nurses at the clinic tried for 90 minutes to get the needles in my arm and in the end, after sticking me more than 5 times, they gave up and told me I had to go see a vascular surgeon because obviously there was something wrong with my fistula.

More tears, more pain, more fear...  more trauma.  

Now I was terrified on a whole new level.  What if my fistula really was bad?  How could I get my treatments, which I need in order to survive at this point, if they can't use it?  

The clinic set me up to go to the hospital that day to get a Fistulagram.  Basically, that is a test, done in an operating room, where the Vascular Surgeon goes into the fistula and injects dye into it to check the flow and make sure there are no clots.  I was given a light anesthetic which made me sleepy, but didn't stop me from feeling everything that was going on...  

I currently have TennCare Medicaid.  My Medicare will kick in after I've been on Dialysis for 3 months.  For now, and until Dan gets hired away from the Temp Agency and we can get Employer provided Health Insurance, I'm at the mercy of State Sponsored Medicaid.  While I am more grateful than I can properly express that I have that option, there are serious overhauls that need to be made to the system.  

The Clinic sent me to one of the several hospitals in our area.  I registered and then was left to sit for over 2.5 hours while other patients came and went.  I was told that Medicaid had not yet approved my procedure at that particular hospital because THAT hospital didn't accept my particular type of Medicaid.  Therefore I had to have pre-authorization for it and Medicaid was slow to get to that.  I called Medicaid myself to find out what was going on and was told that they actually have up to 72 hours to make a decision on my treatment.  I explained that this was a life-saving procedure since I need dialysis to survive now and I can't dialyze until the procedure is done.  

Medicaid then told me that I needed to go to the ER because if you go to the ER, they cover it no matter where you go.  Wait... what?  UGH!  So off we went to the ER at that same hospital.  Once I checked in there, I called back to the clinic and told them what was going on.  They got on the phone with the Doctor who would be doing my procedure and the Doctor's office called me back to tell me to go home and instead, go back in the next day to this other hospital that DOES take my particular form of Medicaid.  Great.  Because you know, I NEED more stress...

Thankfully, everything was properly arranged for the next day and I headed in for my test.

Yeah, it felt just as pleasant as you think it did.  I don't remember much other than pain and crying out in pain.  Oh, and I remember the Surgeon clearly saying that my fistula was one of the most well done that he's ever seen.  The flow is excellent and there are no clots or anything else.  The only 'problem' is that the fistula itself is set a little deeper in the arm than the nurses are probably used to.  The Surgeon was actually kind of pissed off that he had to deal with this at all.  He said that he was getting tired of nurses deciding that just because they can't get the needles in on the first few tries that there must be something wrong with the fistula and therefore he needs to fix it.   

So now I know that there is nothing wrong with my fistula other than it is deeper in the arm than the nurses are accustomed to.  The day after the test (Friday) I went back to the clinic for dialysis.  This time I had a different nurse who took her time and managed to make both needles work on the first try each.  It was wonderful!  

Oh, before I forget, I also want to give a huge hug and many thanks to all the Nurses in my life.  I don't mean just the nurses at the hospitals and clinics...  I mean all the nurses on my Facebook list and in my life in general.  One of these wonderful Gals suggested to me that I ask for EMLA creme.  This magical concoction helped a LOT.  Thankfully my Medicaid did cover that because Medicare makes you jump through a million hoops before they will approve it and when they do approve it, only the clinic can get it.  In my case I was able to go right to Walgreen's and pick up a prescription for it.  

After applying the cream, you have to wrap the area in clear wrap.  Not really sure why, but if it works, pass me the SaranWrap!  lol  

This was a very good day for me.  Here's a little video and some other photos of a very successful dialysis day.

OH!  Almost forgot.  The entire time I was plugged into the machine, we were under severe thunderstorm warnings and tornado warnings.  In fact, we also experienced golfball sized hail while I was sitting there helpless in my chair.  So yeah, while the dialysis itself was a piece of cake that day, there were still huge emotional stresses going on.  These were the storms that killed over 30 people in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana.  Yeah... those storms.  

This is what the 'kidney' on the machine looks like after they put all the blood back into your body.  No real reason to post this other than I think it looks neat with the streaks in it.  =P

Ok, the next treatment attempt requires it's very own entry, so I'll close this one for now.