March 1, 2022

The biggest thing about this day was putting in a new Central Line, so they could do dialysis. Now. Let’s talk about dialysis. Even though I only have one kidney, and understand that one day I may need dialysis, I 100% had no idea what it was. Dialysis. Kidneys. Must have something to do with pee, right? I get that “dialysis” is taking something out and putting it back in, I think…? Or it’s, like, cleaning the kidneys somehow? Well. What an education I got THIS day, let me tell you.

Well, I have been searching all of my days
All of my days
Many a road, you know
I’ve been walking on
All of my days
And I’ve been tryna find
What’s been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night

Tim does seem a little more alert today. Not really interactive, but his eyes have been open almost the whole time I’ve been here, and I’ve been here about 45 minutes. He’s also still watching CNN, so either he is super interested in global politics or he’s having some sort of hallucination about it being 1987.

Today the plan is to, before 2, get him a new central line, and then at 2, his first dialysis starts. It should go about two hours. I don’t know that I’ll be able to stay for the whole thing, I kind of needed to get some HaldeCraft orders out today. I’ll stay if there are problems, but if there’s no drama by about 3, I might go ahead and leave then (and feel super guilty about it) (but at least I’ll get the HaldeCraft orders out).

Well, I have been quietly standing in the shade
All of my days
Watch the sky breaking on the promise that we made
All of this rain
And I’ve been tryna find
What’s been in my mind
As the days keep turning into night

Hilariously (?) it’s family day here today — our RT, Donald (he’s my favorite so far), his wife Wendy is our nurse, and her sister Amy is our Tech. I was like, what are y’all, the Conyers family?! Everybody gotta get involved in the health care fun?!

Sounds like they might be about to come in and do the central line soon, so I’ll wrap this up in case they have to kick me out to the waiting room for a bit. Oh, nope, I lied, they were just going to reinsert the NG tube that he coughed up earlier. I thought they’d taken it out, but it looks like he coughed it out some time between 7 and 10 this morning.

How many new feeding tubes was that? Ten? Twelve? Honestly, I lost count.

Well, many a night I found myself with no friends standing near
All of my days
I cried aloud, I shook my hands
What I’m doing here
All of these days
For I look around me
And my eyes confound me
And it’s just too bright
As the days keep turning into night

Today I’m really liking seeing Tim’s team work as a team. Maybe it’s that I know some of them literally are family, but everyone today seems a little more willing to help each other out with things. The last week almost everyone seemed kind of demoralized, low-grade angry, and not willing to go out their way to help each other or check on each other. Today I’m seeing more heads popping in, asking “you need anything?” or “everything OK?” – that’s much more like what the vibe was in the ICU.

Oh, and Tim has the hiccups. It’s driving me bananas. He’s sleeping through it, and doesn’t at all seem bothered by it when he is awake… clearly it’s bugging me more than him.

OK, they really are here to do the central line now, so I’mma wrap this up. No photos today, yesterday wasn’t very photogenic.

xoxo y’all

So, I don’t know what I THOUGHT dialysis was, I think I had some vague idea that like chemo on TV, you’re sitting comfortably in a chair with an arm up or something? Well. Let me tell you. If I ever have to get dialysis, they are going to have to sedate me. First they put a central line in Tim’s neck, right below his ear. It was a two-parter; one for stuff coming out and one for stuff going back in. Then they had these long, clear tubes that ran from those ports across his body, over the bed, to a machine that was going to circulate something. What was that something? Blood. Blood came out of one port, travelled all the way across his body and down the bed to a machine that spun it around and cleaned it and put it back.

For the first few minutes, I had to sit down.

After about half an hour, I had to leave.

I can handle a lot, y’all. A lot. But this? Seeing his blood travel halfway across the room? When he’s been notoriously ripping things out right and left as they bother him? Even though they had his hands in those big puffy marshmallow things, and tied to the bed… all I could see was him getting loose and ripping out one of those things from his neck. He’d be dead before a nurse could probably even get to him, and the thought made me faint and lightheaded in a way that nothing else had, so far. Not his chest scar. Not seeing him shocked back into a regular heart rate. Not seeing him naked and being cleaned by strangers. All of that was fine. His blood traveling about the room, out of his body?

I had to leave earlier than expected that day.

Now I see clearly
It’s you I’m looking for
All of my days
So I smile
I know I’ll feel this loneliness no more
All of my days
For I look around me
And it seems you’ve found me
And it’s coming into sight

As the days keep turning into night
As the days keep turning into night
And even breathing feels all right
Yes, even breathing feels all right
Now even breathing feels all right
Yes, even breathing
Feels all right

Lyrics by Alexi Murdoch
All My Days