Cam is well, so let's leave the explanation of my demons for another day. :)
TODAY I just want to thank God, the universe, and every cell in Cam's body for the goodness that we have right NOW (even though I just heard him in the other room swear at his computer).
What's today's good news? We cleaned some stuff. (Always makes me happy.) While knee-deep in the coat closet, Cam found the canvas bag that I had toted back and forth to his dialysis sessions a year ago.
He arrived in the kitchen with the canvas bag and a smile, declared that we didn't need to store our dialysis bag anymore, and proceeded to pull out its contents:
When Cam was doing dialysis three times a week, I found as a caretaker that I needed to be ready for the four-hour sessions, plus drive time to and from. I'd usually pick us up a sandwich at the medical center at some point, but I kept some essentials in our dialysis bag:
Water and juice (not pictured)
Crackers, applesauce and spoon
Hand sanitizer & wipes
Chapstick
Medication and Tylenol
The Luna bar and fruit snacks were for me -- can't be a caretaker if you're having a blood sugar drop!
Other necessaries that aren't pictured that should go in the bag:
Small travel blanket
Sun glasses
Dialysis was really, really rough on Cam. He would get terrible cluster headaches. Plus, I could tell during every minute that he was miserable in a way impossible for him to articulate -- but Cam wouldn't have complained even if he could have articulated it. Frankly, I still can't even begin to appreciate what it must feel like for a patient with kidney failure to have his blood sucked out of his body, cycled through a cleaning machine, and then put back into his body -- repeatedly.
His last dialysis session, a year ago, resulted in an allergic reaction to the dialyzer . . . something that's supposedly extraordinarily rare, yet Cam experienced it multiple times. Cam's penchant for being unique is remarkable.
During that last session, he was suddenly freezing and asked me to go to the car and dig some items out of our emergency car kit. At first he looked cute in his knit hat, gloves and a big blanket, but soon it wasn't enough, and the staff had to bring him an insulating plastic blanket:
But it wasn't long before his temperature spiked, his blood pressure changed drastically, and I was seeing all the other tell-tale signs of an allergic reaction. I insisted that the technicians end the dialysis. They weren't so sure and wanted to phone the doctor.
Meanwhile, my husband was having an agonizing experience. He looked corpse-like:
It was terrifying.
So I fought with the technicians, insisted that I was the one who'd observed the same signs when he'd had dialysis reactions while still in the hospital, and that I knew what I was talking about.
The technicians relented and began shutting down the dialysis machine.
The doctor arrived and sent him to the ER . . . which was good, because we found out Cam had a lingering infection. But the three days in the ER were not so fun while doctors ran tests to be sure that the infection wasn't in his actual dialysis catheter (which went straight into his aorta and then heart). They feared that if there was infection in the catheter, he would become septic. Thank goodness three days of test results showed that the catheter was fine.
I think our doctor's decision that Cam could get by without dialysis was prompted in part by how freaky it was that Cam kept having allergic reactions to the dialyzer. Cam's other reactions had been in the hospital in North Carolina, and when we initially warned our L.A. doctor about them, he had been incredulous: "Those are rare. A chance of one in 4,000!" Mmm-hmm. Cam has always had a way of inspiring others to step up their intellectual game, and not even his doctors could ever escape that.
But here's the point of TODAY: that's in the PAST! Look how good this sexy man looks while cleaning around the house on a Saturday afternoon NOW:
Cam probably now has 50% function of his kidneys at best, but he doesn't let that get him down.
Awesome, right?
Goodbye, dialysis bag.
