Monday, November 14, 2011

Continuing dialysis adventures

    It seems like years ago now. Dad was in the hospital, and I was trying to persuade them that it wasn't a good idea to drag him all the way across town three days a week through 100 degree weather in an ambulance for dialysis. There were two dialysis facilities reasonably convenient to the nursing home I had chosen. Dad already had a permanent catheter in his chest for dialysis. One of the facilities wanted him to have a graft in his left arm for dialysis instead. So the hospital did that and sent him along to the nursing home.
    As far as we can remember, it wasn't the dialysis facility that he wound up using that wanted the graft. These guys used the permanent catheter instead for well over three months. However, suddenly they have decided to use it, and that the permanent catheter is too much of an infection risk, and that it has to come out. Immediately. (Well, Wednesday.) I'm trying to find someone there to talk to about it. Because he isn't going to be staying at the nursing home, and he and Margaret aren't going to want to go all that way for dialysis. And the other dialysis facilities are under different ownership, and might well prefer the permanent catheter.
    Moreover, using the graft hurts Dad, and there's a lump (possibly a hematoma) in his arm near the site. The catheter never caused any problems at all. It's very frustrating waiting on a callback. In theory of course, they shouldn't be able to do any procedure without express permission from either me or him. But maybe I signed that away when he started; they certainly have already done one procedure (admittedly minor) without asking for any signatures. As I say, frustrating. Hopefully, I can get this straightened out before Wednesday.

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