Goodbye giant fistula

Monday, the new ASH catheter was put into my shoulder. Since I hadn't had a proper dialysis treatment in almost a week because of the problems with the new fistula infiltrating, my potassium levels were too high to have the fistula removal surgery.  I went home a bit later.  I had a dialysis treatment Monday night with the ASH catheter to lower the potassium. Treatment went fine. I didn't get much sleep at all as I couldn't move my shoulder/neck whatsoever.

I went into dialysis Tuesday morning to have bloodwork done to make sure the potassium was down.  They were supposed to send the bloodwork to the hospital when ready.  I went to the hospital around 11 like the doctor told me. I wasn't on the chart for surgery preparation so they had to clear a room for me. After I finally get into a room, we find out that I'm not on the surgery schedule. Great. We wait in the room for a few hours and are finally told that I'm on the schedule. The nurse sets up an IV, the doctor talks to me for a minute, the anesthesiologist talks to me also.  It's finally time to go. I'm wheeled to the operating room and I'm out within a minute or two.

The surgery evidently took an hour and 45 minutes or so when the doctor expected like 50 minutes. I was in the recovery room before being moved back to the normal room for two hours or so according to my parents.  The surgery went fine though. My blood pressure was high after moving back to the normal room so I had to wait a while for the anesthesiologist to finish a surgery so he could give me the ok to go home.  We finally got home around 10PM.

The incision goes from my elbow to my shoulder and is quite painful so I'm on this crazy pain medication that makes my head get all woozy, dizzy, and makes me feel awful in general.  Yesterday and today, the pain has receded enough so that I can stop taking that medicine and just take regular tylenol.  I did have to unwrap the ace bandage from my elbow and extend it all the way from my hand to my shoulder since my hand and arm were severely swelling from the surgical trauma.  The swelling has gone down some but my arm is still wrapped up. I'm getting pretty tired of having to hold it up also.Not to mention not being able to use my right arm, or leave the house .  It's kinda difficult to type all this with one hand.

I see the doctor again for a checkup on Tuesday. Hopefully this will be the last set of issues I'll have to deal with and that the transplant can happen this summer without any problems.