First Day of the Second Month Randomness

Rob is at dialysis right now and I'm praying that he gets a good night's rest while dialyzing. He usually does sleep pretty good while at the nocturnal clinic, but sometimes he doesn't for whatever reason. He just switched jobs within his company, so now he is working a Mon-Fri 9 to 6pm cubicle job. I'm a little scared that Rob will get too sleepy to perform his work duties to the best of his ability on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, after he comes off from his treatment. For the past 8 months or so, since he's been on nocturnal, he usually had to go into work at noon or 1pm on Tuesday and Thursdays, giving him extra time to snooze after coming home from treatment. But as it stands for tomorrow morning, he will likely get home at 6:15-6:30am, and will need to be in the shower, getting ready for work starting at 7am. That doesn't give him a lot of time to take an after dialysis nap. I will just pray about it and give this worry over to God, because there's no point in me stressing out over it!

For dinner tonight, I made Rob's new favorite recipe, which can be found on the back of a Stove Top cornbread stuffing mix box. They call it "Easy Chicken Bake" which sounds so generic! So I decided to change the name of it and call it "Totally Yummy Chicken Casserole"!

To finish my blog post tonight, I will write about one thing from my random brainstorm flow chart that I did last week. See pic here, if you don't know what I'm talking about.

I guess I'll start by telling you about how I got to the word "filter" from my starting word of kidney. For those of you reading this who are very familiar with dialysis, you don't need me to explain, I'm certain of that. But for those who are not very familiar with dialysis, this should help!

You know the picture you see when you first see our blog? The one where Rob is sleeping and there's a super-cute little beagle on his lap? That cylindrical tube thing labeled NxStage is the filter. You'll see one tube coming out of the top of the filter that is dark red from the continuous pumping of Rob's blood, and another tube that looks clear/empty, but it is not. That one is filled with a continuous pumping flow of a liquid called "dialysate" (die-al-uh-sate). So, the filter acts as an artificial kidney, because Rob's kidneys don't work like they should. At least they didn't when that picture was taken. (it was taken in November 2008)

But now, Rob doesn't even have any kidneys in his body at all, as they were removed last summer. A lot of people are totally shocked when we tell them that Rob doesn't have kidneys. They say things like, "Umm, don't you NEED kidneys?" or "Seriously, why aren't you dead?" Yes, some people are trying to be funny when they ask these questions, but others, nope, they are dead serious. So we take this to be a great time to educate others about dialysis and how it works. And there's no way to describe it without mentioning the word "filter". Hence, my flow from the word Kidney to Filter, in my brainstorm flow chart.

That tube labeled NxStage has probably a thousand paper-thin semi-permeable membranes that Rob's blood passes next to. The dialysate acts as a magnet of sorts, and pulls off the yucky stuff in Rob's blood, by way of osmosis. That yucky stuff goes into the waste line and is disposed of, and the cleaner blood is returned to Rob's body. This process happens numerous times during a single dialysis treatment. Each time the blood passes by the membranes inside the NxStage filter, it gets cleaner and cleaner. So if you've ever wondered what your own healthy kidneys did all day, besides producing urine, now you know! They filter out all the "yucky" stuff that our body doesn't need, mainly extra salts and minerals and pharmaceuticals.

That's all for now! I hope everyone reading this has a great day/night!