10/18/21

This entire day was frustrating, we were short staffed. It is what it is. I got to work at 6 am and left work around noon to drop Ethan off at his co-op. That took up my entire lunch hour and back to work I went until a little after 5. I immediately came home to start dialysis. 

While the machine was doing it’s warm up routine, I made dinner and brought it in Ethan’s room to eat while he was having his treatment. All was going as planned until our dialysis machine became Janice from friends and threw alarm after alarm….after alarm. 

The machine wasn’t running like it normally does. Every time it alarmed, it was accompanied by a super sonic blast of piercing assault to our ears. Our treatment kept extending as I was trying to navigate the alarms and read through how to resolve them. Nothing was working.

We have a hotline that we call when this issue occurs. I did a couple troubleshooting moves and it was at least running.  Running much slower, but running. I had a few minutes with things quiet. 

I still had to call the Medicaid office, with the machine finally cooperating I had a minute to call. Of course when I finally got to speak with a human, the machine started to alarm. So then I was navigating Medicaid, learning that Ethan has an “exemption” for some reason and troubleshooting the alarm at the same time.

I remained quite pleasant on the phone because the lady I was talking to was struggling with her words. She asked me to spell my last name. Then she asked me my first name. Then she asked to spell my last name again. She then realized she had already asked me that question and apologized. “It is late and a Monday…..don’t even worry about it.” We clearly both were over this day.

She gave me another number to call but that office is open from 8-4. That’s convenient. (Sarcasm).

More alarms were happening and I texted our dialysis nurse an S.O.S. He called me right away. He suffered through my grumpiness and we were troubleshooting together. At least he made me laugh while helping. At one point he told me to “pump it up”. I asked him “pump what up? What does that mean? What am I pumping up?…..the jam? Am I pumping up the jam?&” He laughed, which made me laugh. Poor Ethan was stuck listening (or ignoring) to our silliness.

I also was texting with one of my BFF’s. She made my day. That is my bright side of the days that pass. When you don’t feel like being the best version of your self, friends are just there waiting to boost you up. What a wonderful bright spot that is.

When dialysis ended, I took a picture of some of the extensive alarm list. For every line listed, was a terrible violation of our ears. This treatment went awry!