In-Home Dialysis Partner: Why Is This Person Important?

Sharon:

Having a dialysis partner is very important. It is something you cannot do on your own. My dialysis partner is my husband and he plays a big role in it because he is the one who hooks me up to the machine after I cannulate my arm. Cannulate means to stick your arm. So I cannulate myself and then he hands me the tubes; he runs the blood pump so he has to make sure that he does the right increments of numbers and interestingly enough, my husband is illiterate and he doesn’t know numbers, but he knows how to count and so he does them in five increments at a time and he does very well.

Your partner must stay with you because there could be an emergency; we don’t know. So they must be close and stay with you. Every half hour he presses a button on the face of the machine that gives us some data that we need to write down on a flow sheet and they are very important. They are very important to be there with you. They are very important to help you set up and to take down.

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Tags

• Chronic Kidney Disease

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