So this is haemodialysis, I'm doing it three days a week (warning: needles and blood)

This post is mainly for my family, but also for others who are interested in what my haemodialysis treatments involve. If you don't like the site of needles or blood, best not to watch the videos.

I'm kind of training for home haemodialysis at the moment. I can set up the machine and I have needled (1) myself. I couldn't do much more than that as my fistula needed some repairs. You've seen a picture of my recently operated on fistula. It usually looks better than that, I'll post another picture soon.

Here is a video of the set up of a fresenius 5008 dialysis machine. We use these at my centre. I will use a variation of this unit when I do the home training. This video is very long (15 or so mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DM-3v0jYd4

The next video is of a nurse cannulating and connecting a patient to the dialysis machine. It's a life support machine, without it, I'd eventually stop working altogether.

When I go home, we will use needles that have quite long lines for connecting and disconnecting from the machine. The long lines also makes it easier to pull the needles out at the end.  Pulling the needles out is usually performed with the hand that has the fistula in it. The other hand needs to apply pressure over the needle site to stop the bleeding (for me that can sometimes take a very long time!).  This video goes for 8 or so minutes and involves needles and blood. Don't watch if you get queasy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_ZcDE-PTgI

I currently do this three days a week. I'm on the machine for 4.5 hours, most people in Australia do 5 hours three days a week. People that do less are people who don't weigh much. When on home haemodialysis I can spend more time on the machine. This will result in better dialysis and clearances of toxins. It also means that to some extent you have fewer dietary restrictions. The longer you can stay hooked up the better your overall health will be.

I spend around 20-60 mins driving into dialysis and home after. There is the time to set the machine up. There is also the time it takes to connect and disconnect me and the machine. I've mentioned my bleeding time records.

I still have bad bleeding days even when my fistula is working great. Usually the reason is because my INR is too high (blood thinning indicator). Info about INR at wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prothrombin_time#International_normalized_ratio