A hole in one go

Sometimes the biggest changes are bought about by the smallest endeavours. Last Friday I was given the opportunity to have a go at doing my needles. In the past, I would have responded with a hollow laugh and a sense of overwhelming anxiety that was only placated by my belief that a transplant would come soon and I could forget about dialysis completely, needles and all. But now, with the hope of getting a kidney all but extinguished, my only recourse is to learn how to put my needles in as a first step on the road doing my own dialysis at home.

Admittedly, it is scary how quickly I have had to radically change my expectations of life, but home dialysis now seems like the most promising route to happiness…so when my nurse, let’s call her Doris, asked if I would like to learn to do my needles…Reader, I said yes.

And I only fucking went and did it! Well, almost…for the first, lower needle I rested my hand upon Doris’s as she pushed it through the skin, but for someone who has spent almost five years turning her head in the opposite direction whenever a needle came into view, this in itself was a major achievement. When it came time to do needle number 2, however, the adrenaline was flowing and I actually held it myself and, with Doris’s help, I inserted it into my fistula. Boom. I was pathetically pleased with myself.

Then I went home for the weekend and went a bit mental. I kept replaying the experience in my head; I had, voluntarily, pushed two very large needles into my arm and left them there for four hours - and felt joyful for doing it. Something was wrong with this scenario. I must admit, I felt…sad; sad that my life had come to this, sad that this was now my reality; sad that this was something I was having to contend with at all, let alone experiencing it as a triumph. But there isn’t room for that sort of thinking now. A transplant is not going to come along and save me anymore, so I have to make my own luck and you know what they say: nothing is as lucky as two holes in your arm. Or something like that.

I was worried that when I returned to the hospital on Monday my enthusiasm for self-needling would have waned, but the incentive of home dialysis was overwhelming. I reminded myself that if I had done it once I could certainly do it again, and the more I do it the more adept I shall become and the less ghoulish it will seem. This time was even better than the first: the lower needle was a joint effort, but the top one I all but did unassisted. In the space of for days I have somehow managed to overcome five years of debilitating anxiety about needling myself – I suspect we are all capable of the most extraordinary things given certain circumstances. The next step is to become proficient enough that I can perform the whole process, very literally, single-handedly; after that, I can start to look into the feasibility of taking charge of my own treatment in my own home. I have to believe, somewhere in the recesses of my mind, that one day this will all change, and that I won’t be reliant on a machine forever, otherwise I wouldn’t bother to carry on. But for the time being, I am not thinking beyond the next set of needles.

It’s a hole new world.