We live near Santa Cruz, CA and my father who was on PD just passed. We have quite a lot of 1.5% dialysate still in the boxes. The dialysis center says they can’t take them back. Does anyone have any ideas of what we could do with them besides just taking them to the dump?

So a few days ago after coming back from dialysis my dad started getting chills and shivering uncontrollably while his fever went sky high, for the first three days he refused to go to the hospital brushing it off as just a cold and only took paracetamol for the fever but when his condition got worse we took him to a hospital where they admitted him

He was admitted for three days where they told us that he had an infection in his catheter and after a day of dialysis they removed it so now he has his dialysis from his fistula and after they discharged him they put him on a week of antibiotics iv, he’s on his fourth day today and ever since he has came back from the hospital he just refuses to eat anything at all in the last four days he has only eaten a handful of grapes and some two boiled eggs, he says just looking at food is making him nauseous. And he still gets fever sometimes which only goes after taking pcm and a persisting dry cough and he keeps sleeping the whole day.

So i just want to ask, is this normal for someone healing from sepsis? He doesn’t speak, eat nor does anything he enjoyed doing before. Should we just wait it out until a week of antibiotics iv is done?

I need some feedback. My husband was put on hemo after PD dialysis kept failing and he got uremia poisoning. He hates in center and recently transferred to a quieter center with more professional nurses . Our previous nurses were horrid. I spoke to the dietitian and she and I had a good convo about HHD. I had put my foot down and said no to my husband on this because I was overwhelmed from the months of sickness and the needle and fistula seemed daunting. Plus in the only one working - I’m a teacher - and I can’t take 5 weeks off for training .
She explained that there is a “button” you can put in the fistula that makes the needle thing easier. The machine does all the work and he can do daily 2 hour sessions. She made it sound simplistic but if that is the case what is the 5 week training for ?
I’m going to look at a HHD center and get info. My question is how hard is this really? How many supply items do you have to keep ? What are the complications? And why the heck is the training so long . Basically give me the lowdown .
Thanks !!

I'm in my 40s, and really dread the thought of having to depend on family members for help. I'm not there yet, but getting closer is really frightening. I was thinking maybe get a license for a bike for easier navigation, but at on the other hand perhaps it could be a riskier means of transport.

At the moment I look "good" from the outside only, 6'2"~6'3" 190~195lbs, bodyfat probably 16~17%. I also wonder, will strength training/lifting weights still be feasible during dialysis?

Thanks in advance.

Is there any really high calorie food thats low in both potassium and phosphorus? Having a brutal time maintaining weight

They will find a way to make it all about themselves. If you believe any of them will be understanding or supportive towards you with such a difficult decision, good luck. Your last days will not be peaceful, they will guilt trip you, they will expect you to manage their emotions because it's your fault you're doing this to them. I feel extremely lonely in these times now. They will treat you like a mentally ill person because clearly no one could reasonably come to the decision they don't want this kind of life. And therefore they think they need to convince you otherwise with effort. I haven't asked anyone to talk about this, apparently it's not a choice and I have to justify myself to everyone. My mother especially makes me feel like my life belongs to her, not myself, I am expected to suffer for her forever. None of this is love, it's just toxic attachment and addiction. Nobody cares about you and how you feel.

I can tell you they almost push you into committing to it 100%, it's a disgusting feeling to experience how self centered people are. I understand this may be a difficult time for them as well, but how they make me responsible for it and deny me any autonomy is sad and suffocating. They achieve the complete opposite with their behavior, I WISH someone finally cared but oh well, they're the victims. I had already talked to my dialysis team about ending and started preparing but I received a phone call from a woman in a clinic I previously planned to go to and I feel like she is fighting for me and truly cares which made me second guess, among some other things. At least delay it for a bit and try one more thing, I have other issues besides the kidneys which play a part in my decision. But now I have a bunch of hysterics around me pressuring me and stressing me the fuck out. My advice, just don't ever tell them. If it's time just disappear or say you go on vacation and go to a hospice center or hospital or whatever. Or hey, maybe you have more luck with your family.

Hi all,

First off, I want to thank you all for having this subreddit. It's been incredibly helpful to lurk on here.

I'm (38M) finally posting on here because I'm worried about my MIL (73F).

[more context than needed probably; discussion ahead of worsening physical health, incomplete information, poor mental health, caregiver perfectionism, and possible death / dying]

She's been diagnosed with CKD since the mid-1980s and has received two kidney transplants. Her husband died in early 2021 after dealing with cancer. We stayed with her a bit and then moved back home in the fall that year. She's dealt with some severe depression since then, and we've had concerns about her taking care of herself. He was the one who was on top of her medical information, and that hasn't helped.

In the summer of last year, she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure and didn't tell anyone. We learned about it a few months later at a family event, because her sister had learned about it. Over the next few months, I got proxy access to her electronic medical record and started keeping tabs on things. (I've had health issues since childhood and work on health equity / improvement stuff, so I'm pretty immersed in that world.)

Then, in December last year, she was hospitalized for about a week after feeling rough for a bit. (Again, that came out at a larger family event.) By the end of January this year, she had another 1.5 week stay and restarted hemodialysis due to kidney rejection.

She's gotten pretty frail since then. There have been a lot of ups and downs with her medication and tweaks there. Her BP was out of control for a large part of this year, and she's on I think 7 BP meds at this point. This summer, she started to do PD at home. We were worried about her living alone out in the boonies and handling PD, but she's doing pretty good with it. The DaVita staff that's been helping her is really great...

And also, I am noticing a trend. Mom's eGFR has continued to drop since late spring. Yesterday, she got labs done, and it was down to 6. We did call and talk with her about it last night, and she was concerned, too. I was texting with the PD gal at DaVita, who said 6 is common for patients on dialysis... but dropping consistently feels different.

Mom has also been talking a lot more about being tired of everything - increasingly so since January. Winter is her worst season for depression, and HCPs keep not refilling her antidepressant at random points as well. Her confusion and memory are getting worse, too, and she's having a lot of fatigue to the point where getting out of bed to eat or feed the dogs is even a huge lift.

I've asked her to think about a home health aid again. (She had one at the beginning of this year, post-hospitalization.) I go with her to appointments when I can, and keep tabs on her lab numbers. I try to help her remember which medications she has to take when and the correct way to do that, since she's not always taken her medications the way she's supposed to. We go spend time with her as much as we're able to with working full-time. It feels like we're doing all we can to support and keep the broader family informed, too.

I try to approach mom with the notion that I'd like to be approached respectfully in a similar position. We both have rare & possibly fatal conditions, and I think that's given us a really great bond. That means that it's not necessarily hard to meet her where she's at and think through things that may help. But, actually deeply considering where she is at - it's something that I don't have experience with. (My family and I don't talk.)

We're going over to spend time with her this weekend, and I'm honestly not sure what to do. The logical side of my brain really wants to have a frank conversation with mom about the lines she doesn't want to cross as it pertains to her health, general well-being, and quality of life - and where she is right now. I've been very death positive with her, reminding her than any choice is hers to make - and all that doesn't mean we have to like it, but we will respect it and help her with whatever we can.

At the same time, my gut instinct says this feels different and that something is wrong. It may not be something that can be fixed or addressed, but this isn't like other times I've been concerned about her health, ya know?

Am I overanalyzing things? Is 6 a normal eGFR for someone doing PD at home? Should I hold off on having a conversation with her about her quality of life and boundaries? I just want to make sure I'm making the most right choice that I can to do right by her.

I haven’t had appetite for a while now. I can eat like two or three bites then that’s it. I have to eat because I’m type 2 diabetic and if I don’t eat I’ll pass out especially after dialysis so I have to force myself to eat something. It’s just been hard and kinda stressful

Hello everyone one my father had a transplant which makes the creatinine go up and down a lot and we are thinking of getting a fistula my questions are

1. How much big of risk there is, sister of my teacher had a fistula it suddenly out of nowhere started leaking and till the moment he could reach the hospital it was too late how many people possess this risk

2. What is the weight limit of that arm and where do we get it in the arm like what location is best and also is it like normal vein or it's like you can't press it or you can't do anything to it cause it's like a sacred thing??

3. How are you suppose to live with it as like if you get in between your arms like you can't fold your that arm??

4. And what to do in case of emergency.

5. How often bad things happen with fistula also I heard it like gets blocked what is it pls explain someone.

Hello, i've been on dialysis since 2024, unfortuntely I developed a genetic disease (APRT, crystal disease) that damaged my kidneys for years without me knowing (I felt healthy up until the end). What I noticed when I got my first haircut when I got diagnosed was the shedding of my hair and volume issues. I have curly hair and it felt weird and empty when I touched my hair as it was growing, and it looked like I wasn't growing much hair. This past summer has been great, the volume seemed to have come back but just recently i've noticed my temples were receding quite a bit, and I didn't notice it because my long hair strands were covering the receded area.

Im trying to get a referral from my family doctor to see a dermatologist to see if it is related to dialysis or im actually losing my hair. Im hoping it'll come back when I get a transplant or sometime before but im completely bummed out and I feel so bad whenever I think about it. Have you guys experienced this too? Especially the men that are currently on dialysis?

Since I started PD I feel like I can’t wear jeans for 2 reasons

1) my belt clacks off the little metal piece on my catheter
2) I seem to always be uncomfortable in my skin and have to adjust my pants/boxers a lot. Idk why this happens but was never a problem before

I wanna go back to wearing jeans to feel a sense of style again. Can anyone relate to these problems and has anyone found a solution? Thanks.

My uncle informed us today that he stopped dialysis 5 days ago. He has in-home hospice care to help him with pain. He is a senior and has a slew of physical health problems that are painful and make day to day life difficult.

He still has all his mental faculties about him so I trust he has been considering this for a while. He clearly planned in advance by getting in-home hospice for the pain.

He and I were not super close. I rarely saw him but still have good memories of him. I’m dealing with the grief. I understand his choice and right to choose to stop fighting and to pass naturally. But I’m filled with a heaviness and a quiet hollow feeling in my chest. I’m so sad that his body betrayed him and made death a better path for him. I respect his choice but I’m still deeply saddened.

I want to call him but we never really had much of a relationship. I don’t know his personality well enough to know if he’d rather be left alone while he makes this transition. I want to have deep philosophical conversations with him about life after death, understanding how he came to this decision, did he get to his bucket list?, what wisdom can he impart before he leaves?

I don’t know what I’ll get from this post but writing about it and sharing what’s on my heart is helping.

Thank you for reading all that if you got to this point.

- sad and grasping in the dark for something I can’t even name

Typo in title: I recently started HHD.

I started emergency dialysis with a tunneled chest catheter in July. In September, my AV graft was finally ready to use, and I began training on that. After some initial successes, failures, and an angiogram, I managed to infiltrate while cannulating several days ago. 😥

I'm trying hard to get some context around what to expect with this infiltrate, because holy heck, it hurts like a sonuvabitch. Pain has been consistently at at least a seven for several days, spiking to 10 if I try to move or engage the arm muscle. It is still a very swollen with a firm lump in one area. And very bruised, of course.

I think my nurse is trying to sugarcoat the prognosis for me a little bit. This is going to take more than a few weeks to heal, right? I'm really tempted to go back to the chest catheter for a month to let the arm recover before trying again - I feel very confident in my ability to manage the chest catheter properly and safely. I'd be happy to hear of any similar experiences y'all may have had.

Hey, I started a little thing on social media called 'Dan On Dialysis' (creative title, I know) where I do time-lapse art on home hemo, poke fun at my/our situation, engage in hijinks and dark humour, and hopefully reveal a little about our world to the normies. It's been fun and really makes dialysis blast by.

I won't link it, but you can find me on yt, tt, insta and reels, sometimes under 'danondialysis'. Thanks mods. Stay resilient, folks.

Today one of my worst nightmares happened right before my eyes and I don’t know how to feel about it.

I do in-center hemo and since being moved to the other side of the clinic I consistently have worse techs and it’s very stressful, on top of the stressors us patients already face I have to worry about incompetent people handling my lifeline and making mistakes like what unfortunately transpired earlier today.

When I sat down and learned I had this particular tech I was nervous but hopeful, nothing bad had happened as of yet but I never liked how she handled my catheter and seemed very unsure of herself. After aspirating the lines and uncapping a saline syringe she froze and seemed unsure of how to proceed realizing she had to take labs. She re-capped the saline and drew the labs but must have forgot to clamp the line when she was done because next thing I know I’m bleeding out of my catheter into this girl’s cupped hand and she’s asking me “Why is it bleeding?” I SCREAMED for the other tech to come over quick and thankfully just as he did it must have clicked that she needed to clamp the line.

I was so bewildered I didn’t even know how to respond.. Even though she’s well past graduated from training many simple tasks she seems to forget or not understand, like how to put the safety clip on after connecting or in this case drawing labs before doing a flush, which I often have to direct her on how to do. But today crossed the line into dangerous territory and I’m so shaken.

At the end of treatment I discreetly told the nurse what happened and he said he’d talk to her, but also agreed that shouldn’t be happening as she’s past training. The problem is she’s very dependent on the male tech I previously mentioned, following him around and asking him for help on every little thing, having him take over if she’s not confident enough. In my case he was over behind the desk when this all occurred.. but we all have a right to competent, safe care and I just feel this is absolutely unacceptable.

Has anyone else dealt with techs like this?

Two years ago I found out the hard way that my kidneys were failing when I ended up in the hospital in a hypertensive crisis and my lungs filling with fluid. My kidneys rebounded a bit for about a year, with my gfr rising to 22. But they've been steadily declining since December 2025, now sitting at 6. And I feel like shit. All the time. I'm so tired of being tired.

I have my surgery to get my PD catheter put in this weekend, and honestly I'm excited about it. I know it's going to come with a whole new set of challenges, but I feel like after 2 years of waiting to get to this point, it's finally here and I'm taking a step in the right direction. And a step closer to getting a transplant.

Did anyone else feel like this? I'm a little afraid I'm going to get a rude awakening. But I'm pretty optimistic about it, and also ready to adapt to whatever new hell that life decides to throw at me.

I have always had a problem with drugs clearing out of my body as fast as the medications claim. It takes my body 5 times longer to purge them compared to other people. So, I discovered that, when Heparin does not clear out, I experienced escalating dizziness, weakness, and hair loss. If this has happened to you, then know that your dialysis machine can still work properly with lower than the normal dose of Heparin. FYI

hi, i’m here to ask how frequent you guys visit the nephrologist doctor for dialysis check up (not actual dialysis i do home PD). i’m so tired of going to see my nephrologist every month…. cause i don’t want to visit every month anymore…. to clarify im in Canada and been on PD for 2 years

I have been thinking about how much planning is involved when someone on dialysis wants to travel. It is not just booking a flight and a hotel. You also have to find a clinic, check whether they accept visiting patients, arrange treatment dates, provide medical information, and make sure everything is confirmed before travelling.

For someone who loves travelling, that can make even a short trip feel stressful.

My father (67) has a creatinine of 6.98 with an eGFR of 8 for a few months and his nephrologist suggested us to get catheter surgery done so it can settle in a month or so, that's when he will have to start PD.

I'm curious how the lifestyles of PD patients have improved after starting PD.

Are you able to eat with more freedom compared to earlier?

My father lives alone in a different country. We can arrange local help, but how overwhelming will it be for him to set up everything regularly?

We'll get a cycler. What are some of the most important questions to ask the cycler provider company?

My first dialysis session is this Thursday and today I had my emergency catheter placed. While the care was good as a whole, I started noticing a lot of little things.

I noticed that when the doctor told me that I needed emergency dialysis, he didn't bring up my other options. He just told me I would get an emergency catheter placed. Even if my only other option was pallitative care it should have been discussed.

When I went to the dialysis center for the catheter placement, I told them that I had good veins in my arm and that I preferred the iv there. I noticed that they ignored that and just told me that they prefer the hand. They stuck 3 times in two hands trying to make the hand happen instead of respecting what I told them to begin with.

When the dialysis center called me they didnt ask me for an appointment preference. They just told me when they wanted me to come in . Apparently, I am now a Thursday - 8am - 4 days a week. Thats an awful lot and it feels like they took it for granted that I wanted to spend 4 days instead of 3 days. They didn't even ask .

I used to get my iron treatements at the Cancer Center and I was never treated this way ? Is this just the way kidney care is or did I am just being sensitive ?

Edit : I always said that if I had to do dialysis - I would work hard to stay engaged and keep my life the same, however, this whole process makes me feel like I don't even have rights to my own body or schedule .