checking in

I know I am bad at this and sometimes forget to write, but i am trying to catch up now

1. Went to Columbia Prespyterian Hospital last week - I am now registered on the NYC Donor list and I love the hospital.
     Its in the Bronx/Washinton Heights area of NYC which is an older area, but the people were nice and I love the doctors and the coorinators which is a huge leap from the coodinators that I dealt with over the past year at Yale.  I felt stressed every day at Yale and uncertain if they were doing more damage than good.


2.  FundRaiser
      Jimmy Booth and the Norwalk Jaycees held a small fundraiser last Saturday night, I was happy to get $750 out of it and i am putting that away to help pay for Hotel rooms in NYC for when I do find a live donor so their family can stay. I know that is a day and 1/2 but its a start

3. Dialysis
      this is still going pretty rough- i am getting better at hooking up to the machine nightly but i am still not getting more than 2 to 3 hours of interrupted sleep nightly. I am exhausted!!!!
    The machine is noisy and I still hurt. The good news is that I only hurt now on 2 to 3 of the 5 sessions so hopefully that is a good sign. If it doesnt improve in 2 weeks, they may discuss opening me back up to look to see if a Hernia is tearing or if something else is going on. Please pray that they don't have to re-open me.

4. The Scare
     Yesterday at work when I was in the restroom, my cap on my catheter came off and hit the floor.  This is a bad sign when your steril cap is now on a dirty company floor and your catheter is exposed to the air which is a direct line into your insides. i didnt' have a choice but to put the old dirty cap back on and hope that i didn't contaminate my entire body.   I called the Dialysis center and they told me to get home immediately, scrub my cath and add a new iodine cap. Then 5 minutes later, put on a new cap and don't plug up that night.

So this morning I was at the Dialysis center bright and early where they removed the half of my catheter that wasn't surgically implanted and replaced it then hooked me up to an IV of antibiotics to be safe.

Lesson learned keep caps and alcohol wipes in my purse just incase it happens again.  The good thing that came out of it was i got a full 8 hours of sleep for the first time in 2 1/2 weeks!


So that's what's going on in my world other than working full time and missing sleep.

Talk soon, M