After Treatment #10

I am a little discouraged. I was so excited because I was feeling so much better and thought now I am over the hill with this dialysis thing. But my last night’s treatment left me feeling really yucky today. I don’t know really how to describe it. Some ways I tried saying how I feel:

Not really myself.
Blah.
Gross.
A little dizzy, but not.
If I were made out of Styrofoam, there would be a steel ball for my head.

Today was a work day, but I called in sick this morning. I hoped getting some more sleep would make the yucky feeling go away. It didn’t really. I finally just decided to get up and go in to work despite how I was feeling. I made it through the day. But as soon as I am done this post, I am heading to bed again.

So why the change? I suspect it is a couple of things. The first is that I had really good needling last night (Yay!), and they ran the machine fairly quickly, so almost twice as much blood was cleaned as ever before. The goal is to clean as many litres of blood as I weigh. We did that and a little bit more. Up until the last treatment, the most that was cleaned was just over half as many litres of blood as my weight.

The second reason is because I received my loading dose of iron last night. It was the first time I have received it intravenously. Up until last night I took iron every night before bed. It was part of my routine. I had to was supposed to not eat three hours before taking my iron. After I took it I would sit up for half an hour and then go to sleep (I usually watched something on TV for that time). If I was up too long after taking my iron, I would feel gross. Apparently it can be hard on your stomach. Anyway, it didn’t really matter to me because the way I cope with not feeling well is sleeping. (Remember, I’m an ostrich. Avoidance can be a good thing!) Well, the loading dose of iron was an amount much larger than I was taking orally. Now I will only be getting iron once a month instead of having to take it every day. I sure hope I don’t feel like this after every treatment with iron. I guess we’ll see next month.

So, needless to say, I haven’t felt very productive today.

Some random thoughts:

I’ve been itchy. It’s driving me crazy.

My daughter and I are working on her homemade valentine’s cards for this year. I’m excited to see the end result again.

I finally have a decent blood pressure machine for at home and have been taking my blood pressure readings. They are at good levels, and I am not on any blood pressure meds at the moment.

I like smiling. I don’t like it when I don’t feel well enough to smile.

Almost every treatment (I think every treatment, but I can’t remember for sure), someone comments on the blanket I have. It is an afghan that my mom made. I love it, and miss her tons.

Bruce holding up my mom's afghan. The colours are much nicer than they look in this picture. And he is wearing a bright orange shirt, which you can kind of see through the afghan! (hee hee)