Published
HI
I'm not a dialysis nurse, I am a special procedures nurse. I can totally empithize with your situation. We put permacaths in so the patients can pull them out, manipulate them, put holes in them, etc... A lot of our dialysis patients are non-compliant about dialysis and catheter care. It is almost like they know they can be "fixed" their next run. I don't know. It is frustrating though. Especially when you see the real sick ones that know dialysis is their lifeline. Excuse my ********, but I don't understand why patients get fistulas and grafts but won't let the dialysis nurse use them.......
Please don't judge someone unless you have been there.. Try the renal diet if you think it is so great and easy to follow.. Don't drink when the temperature rises above 90. Go out in public with needle marks on your arm and have some one recoil from you when they touch your arm.. Spend 12 hours a week hooked up to a machine and then come back here and tell me how you felt... bobbi
May the sun shine brightly on you and may the wind be always at your back..
I understand what you are saying: 3651bht. I do a lot of teaching, and have told myself many many times that if I do not think I could follow the renal diet--its very hard. A person with ESRD has a hard life. Have an uncle who was on HD for 6 years and had a transplant. And, thankfully, is doing well now.
I spoke in my first message, in this thread, about the obese diabetic women in her 30's who would not accept that she was diabetic. Well she called 911 Wednesday, when the ambulance arrived she was in a coma..BS=991, she passed away before they could get her onto the strecher, she had also missed some HD days. Terrible news, we had all tried to teach her about her condition, she just didn't want to know.
I am a dialysis nurse . I am very close to my patients. Good ones and bad ones. As 3651bht said, it's not easy. Imagine yourself going on a reducing diet. But this time it's for life, for the whole life. There is no cure. They have to give up their favorite food, their choices, their time. They have to tolerate the pain, the discomforts. It's not easy at all. Not everyone react to problems in a same way. Some of them take months to accept the condition.
An old thread well past it's sell by date I will close but I suggest you start a thread and ask about diet. Above link may help
misti_z
375 Posts
Go on dialysis, is what one resident said to me one time.
I get so frustrated with some of our HD patients. Well actually there are just two!! I do not know how to 'knock' any sense into them, and yes we have tried teaching they just do not care. One admitted just two nights ago. Admitting Dx--smoking crack for 5 days and missed HD, hyperkalemia, and HTN. K+ of 7.3 and BP 230/140, she is only 29 yo
She admits to even injecting heroin into her permacath.
The other, in her early 30s on HD, weighs about 350# and is a very brittly diabetic. BUT she swears she does not have DM, and eats anything she wants. MD puts on order sheet DO NOT ALLOW EXTRA MEALS, she then cusses us out for not letting her eat like she wants. Her fasting BS is usually around 200 and hemoglobin A1C is 9!!!
How these women are still alive amazes me, when in the next room I have a patient crying because he is taking all his meds, restricting his fluids, going to HD, and is sick.