Or until you get a kidney transplant (If you are lucky enough to get a kidney transplant.)
I Felt Like A Prisoner Chained To That Damn Machine!
- Excruciating pain from the needles and the cramping . . .
- Feeling wiped out all the time from the dialysis.
- Not to mention the blood clots, pulling too much water out of your body or the 100 little things that can go wrong every time you go in.
- The worst part was the loneliness...
I remember when the dialysis nurse put the needle in my arm for the first time. I thought about how it was the first time in two years a woman had touched me.
For two and a half years my life revolved around dialysis. I wake up every day feeling awful and hoping with everything I would get a kidney transplant.
Then I get lucky . . . I get a call from Miami saying they have a 'cadaver' kidney for me . . .
I hop a plane feeling so excited. Feeling like I can finally say goodbye to that machine and get my life back. But the new kidney fails right away. I spend 14 days in the hospital when it was supposed to be only 4 days. The surgery is horrible!
Complications keep coming up and I start to think I made a BIG mistake. That I would have been better off staying on dialysis.
Even when my new kidney stabilizes I still have to deal with the rotten side effects of the anti-rejection drugs I’m on: acid reflux, frequent colds, joint pain, depression and feelings of anxiety.
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