An iron will to succeed

Practice makes perfect

It's Wednesday night, so obviously I am sitting on my sofa attempting to aspirate liquid iron into a syringe whilst watching One Born Every Minute (it's a sad one, be warned). I am comically awful at administering my weekly dose of iron so the nurses have sent me home with some vials, some needles and a set of syringes so that I can practice, because as of the end of next week I'm on my own (horraay-slash-eep). In my defence, it is tricky to suck the iron into the syringe because the iron is in a vacuum-sealed chamber and the level of difficulty only increases when you attempt to do it one-and-a-half-handed. No, I'm not a Paralympic hopeful: technically I still have two functioning hands, but the iron must be administered when I am on the machine when my-left-hand's-connected-to-my-left-arm, and-my-left-arm's-connected-to-the-needles...

Someone recently described training for home dialysis to me as like learning to drive, and it is a very apt comparison. Initially you are as incompetent as you are terrified; every consecutive novelty is cause for panic and alarm and you are mystified by those that can do it, for you surely never will be able. There are fleeting moments of achievement but these are swiftly negated by inexplicable regression where you get in the car/start lining the machine to find you have somehow forgotten everything you've ever been taught.

Then, one day, it clicks. Everything flows and feels natural. Buoyed by success, your confidence grows until you arrive on a plane where you not only know how to do it right, you are happy you could fix it should it all go wrong. You might have been doing this all your life and you become excited at the prospect of striding out solo (rather than doing a bit of sick in your mouth).

So off you go, on your tod, you're not quite sure why people think you should be left to your own devices, but ok...and it turns out driving with an instructor beside you is just about as different to driving on your own as a teapot is to one of the those gross bald cats. I learnt more in my first solitary twenty-minute car journey than I did in eight months of lessons. I was baptised by fire and it was only sheer good luck my older brother's Ford Fiesta didn't meet the same fate.

I have a feeling that my inaugural solo dialysis session will go along similar lines. Today I completed my second session in the "step-down room": a treatment room with a Green Mile-walk to a solitary machine and chair where I am left to fend for myself...bar an intercom to the nurses next door should my arm explode or something. It all sounds very Star Trek but this is still the NHS: on Monday I had to construct and administer my EPO infusion by reading the instructions in the box because the nurse was tied up. If IKEA made dialysis units...

But hell. I may still be utterly useless at giving myself iron, and I might still be unsure what to do when the machine alarms - so far I have been pressing any button until the noise stops - but this is, probably...hopefully...all part of the learning curve. There was a time when I couldn't even hold a needle let alone put two of them in my arm and the progress I've made in the last two months has astounded even me. Things will go wrong from time to time, and maybe I'll only get half an iron dose every other week, but if I can keep myself alive and my potassium level in the non-lethal range, I'll chalk it up to a win.

Though I should mention I wrote off my car, so wish me luck.