So, last week I was on dialysis training, and now it’s the weekend. On friday, my dialysis supplies were delivered and my cycler machine was set up in my bedroom.

The nice guys who delivered my supplies carried them into my office for me, as I specified. And damn, did they deliver a lot of stuff.

The initial order was put in by the nurses, and they are teaching me how to submit follow-up orders myself. I’m using a lot of google calendar. And there is so much stuff that it’s overwhelming, but luckily my wife is good at organizing stuff. While we were in the hospital being taught, she was making lists and ordering shit on Amazon. We stopped by a dollar store for some organizational compartments for drawers, and now my bed’s end-table is very well organized.

So last week, I spent four days of the work week at the hospital taking a course on Peritoneal Dialysis. Yeah, fun. Want to spend days in a hospital that is a major pain to reach due to horrible traffic and lack of urban planning, where they surgically modify your body and then teach you how to live with those modifications. Sound fun?

The people were…awesome. The nurses, orderlies, and the doctors could not have been better in how I was treated. How we were treated, actually, since my amazing wife came with me. I mean, day one is scary enough, since they are planning to cut you open and pull out the PD catheter so you can use it. They’re going to use local anesthesia, but I’m always worried that it’s going to hurt anyway.

I’m surprised that it took this long. I’ve had the website up for a while now, and I just appeared in Glen Gower’s newsletter. He’s our local city councillor, and was kind enough to give me a few minutes of his time recently.

But not everyone is quite so altruistic. I just received an email from a “woman” (who knows?) asking if I am looking for a kidney, when obviously I am. I pointed her at the Ottawa Hospital living donor program, and then did a quick search on her email address out of curiosity.

So, I just had a regular check-up with the CKD clinic. Sadly my kidney function is now 9%. Yes, single digits.

The nephrologist said that it’s important to find the “sweet spot” to start dialysis, between being strong enough to learn how, but close enough to really need it. And she felt that this is that time, so I am now signed up for a 4-day peritoneal dialysis course in about 2 weeks.

So, last Wednesday I dropped by the Riverside Campus of the Ottawa Hospital at the crack of dawn to have Peritoneal Dialysis Catheters surgically implanted in my body. Y’know, I could have just stayed home and worked remotely, but I thought it would be fun to get some good drugs and have some holes cut into me.

Seriously though, my kidney function is dropping (somewhere around an eGFR of 15 and on the way down) and my doctors think it’s a good idea to prepare. I really can’t argue, even though I have been dreading being at this point from about 2008 onwards. Side note: I have learned from experience that sticking my head in the sand and hoping that a medical condition will simply go away does not work. Who knew?

So, this morning I went to consult with a surgeon about Peritoneal Dialysis, specifically having PD catheters surgically implanted in preparation for Dialysis.

Ye Gods, I don’t want to do this. But I don’t feel like dying yet, so I guess I have to.

Surgery is now scheduled for early May. When I was asked if that was ok, I did respond honestly and said that, “none of this is ok and I’m barely holding it together”, but that’s not helpful so I followed up with, “sure”. I’m a nice guy that way.

So, this morning I go to consult with a surgeon about Peritoneal Dialysis, specifically having PD catheters surgically implanted in preparation for Dialysis. I had hoped that this day would never come. Now that it’s here, I am feeling a wide range of conflicting emotions.

Did I do enough to prevent getting here?

Did I push alternate theories, did we really find the cause, and is there still some larger problem looming?