Been a while since I wrote-spent a whole month in the hospital...first a cat scratch made my whole hand swell up and it had to be drained.
No one ever told me that being on dialysis would give me an impaired immune system. I'm always as healthy as the proverbial horse. Now this month-I'm sick. I was out of the hospital for ONE week, during which I was supposed to accomplish-all the tests for the renal transplant (takes months) and reorder the next month home delivery of supplies from Baxter or, as the kidney center said-if you're late again we'll make you go pick them up yourself.
Like I don't have a car-did anyone think that just because you're released that doesn't mean you are instantly strong and well?
Yes,, of course I'm like Charles Atlas, the skinny guy with big muscles and superwoman, too. For the last 2 weeks of the month, I go back in to be sick-a high potassium level and a gall bladder stones attack-but by now my body is under too much stress to heal normally.
And I'm so anemic from all these twice daily blood draws I can barely put one foot in front of the other without falling over. My skin tone evenly matches my cream colored shirts-so nice not to have to figure what coordinates anymore-I can be one uniform shade-grey and white go together, right?
The Great State of Washington has enrolled me in their New Freedom Medicaid Waiver Program because of my End Stage Renal Disease. This is supposed to be consumer directed care wherein the participants are given a budget with the freedom to spend dollars on what services they need. So far I have had one very invasive and over-assuming, insulting interview with a home care agency, in which they assumed that the reason I was on the program was because my incontinence and unwillingness to admit the need for assistance, that I needed a full transfer assist because of my unsteady balance and tremor,(along with all the adaptive equipment) help in turning over in bed ( now tell me again exactly how to help a person who does their own self care why all these assists are necessary)
Last but not, least, do I really need to pursue the care agency's insistence on cutting up my meat and other food items and pureeing my food- No, since I am responsible for paying these people $300/month, I want an itemized list of the what they actually do-not what they think is necessary for me. I am a fully functioning adult, who is actually capable of carrying on my own life without their help. What i need now is due to physical weakness. I need help with laundry, loading and unloading the dishwasher, tearing down the boxes and recycling them for the garbage along with taking down the other used dialysis equipment to the garbage.
The home care aid is supposed to take me shopping once a week-not do my shopping for me with my cash leaving me at home. After 6 weeks, I have yet to see a home care aide. Supposedly one is coming for a Meet 'n Greet for one hour on Thursday. I don't know what she can do in one hour-maybe run up and down the stairs with the broken down boxes a few times?
