dr visit -april 14

All blood tests are good. Machine seems to be doing better job than manual dialysis.

I think with some more time, he will start to feel even better. The freedom of not having to do dialysis 4 times a day has been a major improvement in his life. He hates the machine of course but he feels better most of the time. If he were not dealing with enormous kidneys, he would probably feel completely normal. They continue to grow and cause him so much discomfort.

The machine has an alarm that goes off if something is wrong and I am the only one who hears it. That concerns me a bit. But usually it clears itself and it's because Bruce was laying on the tube crimping it. I also told the nurse that the tube flops all over in the shower and she said we needed to tape it down so it stays going directly into drain.

The hernia needs to be looked at by surgeon and Dr. says he needs to put some "mesh" in there to keep it from being pushed out from pressure of the fluid from dialysis. The typical solution is to "rest the belly" by putting him on Hemodialysis for awhile but Diane knows Bruce well enough to realize that he absolutely cannot handle hemodialysis.

The Dr. talked a lot about the transplant list and how it's determined who gets a kidney. Some say it's a national thing but the reality is that much more go locally because of the time constraints. And it depends on the area in which you live. He is lucky because the national average wait is 7 years and here it is around 2. I'm hoping for 1.5 which would be around December. But tomorrow would work too!