Life on the list

Never have I had so much to write, and so little time to write it. I penned this entry last week on the bus to work (by hand! The humanity!) and still it has taken me a solid ten days to commit anything to blog. This is due in no small part to Tinder (that will get an entry all to itself) but my internship is keeping me in the office until at least 6:30 most days and my brand new nocturnal dialysis regime - you know, the one that is supposed to free up all my time - is consuming any remaining free moment. About a month ago I typed out a post that had the working title of "My Life Has Been Ruined and I Demand Your Pity". I never posted it. I spared no detail enumerating the various teething problems I'd been having, none of which felt like teething problems at the time but hulking, insurmountable obstacles that suggested dialysis wasn't my bag and I should just rent a cottage by the sea and wait for death. It turned out most of the problems were caused by human erro...

Here's a head scratcher for you all. I don't want to dialyse anymore, but I don't want to die. So what to do? Answers on a post card please.

A week ago I wrote an extensive piece about my turbulent start to nocturnal dialysis: the alarms, the lack of sleep, the fact that my life was over...the usual stuff. Then I decided not to post it, because in retrospect the majority of the problems were caused by my own incompetence and it seemed incredibly indulgent to whinge about it. The sessions became easier and more efficient, and the article was all but redundant. This post will be brief; I shall look to write a longer post later, one that details my hilarious nocturnal dialysis antics in full. For now, I shall just say this: I am pretty tired. My internship is hugely enjoyable and rewarding but the days are long and I have only an hour or two when I get home to chew on whatever happens to be in my fridge (ageing salad, questionable tinned tuna) before I have to turn my attention to Dermot. I know it will take time to get used to doing nights, and I am grateful for the additional freedom this regime will give me...but I so mi...

It turns out it was nothing to do with my cack-handed needling after all. My fistula, my trusty bulging buddy for the last five years and counting, is on his last legs. Not his fault, the poor little guy; he is exhausted, and adding an extra two dialysis sessions to his weekly schedule didn't help. Yet he has chosen to collapse at the worst possible time: I am a week into my internship, and working on the most important opportunity of my career to date. Here comes the technical stuff... After Friday's abortive session, my fistula didn't work on Saturday either, so after an hour of good, solid crying on Ellie, I pottered off to the hospital unit, certain that the nurses could do what I hadn't managed and get a needle into the upper of my two insertion sites. The senior matron rammed one in, but no blood came out; when she started frowning and shaking her head I knew something was wrong. I managed to start a one-needle dialysis session, but it offers a very mediocr...

It is Friday night and I am not dialysing. This is not because I am drinking Kopperberg with friends on Clapham Common as I would liked, but because, having rushed home from an incredibly tiring week, I managed to misplace one of my needles. I don't know whether my fistula is "blown" or whether the needle was just in the wrong place; a different solution is needed for either eventuality. Being late on a Friday night, I couldn't get hold of any of the nurses, and never having misjudged my needling before, I didn't know what to do. I So I cried for a bit, then decided to sack off the session and sit on my sofa eating ham and hating myself because I wasn't even hungry. I haven't dialysed and I need to; I will miss three hours worth of treatment this week and now tomorrow's session is pivotal. I am terrified it is going to happen again, or that there is something wrong with my fistula, and everything is going to turn to shit; as it will be Saturday, I don...

I have started running again, much to my own delight. I was out on the common at 10 this morning, basking in the warm sunshine and my own sense of superiority, happy as a clam that I was neither crippled by foot pain nor suffering the ill-effects of a haemaglobin level stuck somewhere between 5 and fuck all. It occurred to me as I bounded along that just as the population of London delineates itself into tribes - the Trendies of Dalston, the Yummy Mummies of Stoke Newington, the Poor People of Tower Hamlets - the running world is also comprised of a number of different sub-sects, creating its own little microcosm. I have identified them thus: The Pros You have to get up early to see a genuine Pro. Easily recognisable by their attire: expensive lycra, sports sunglasses and niche brand trainers. Sometimes they wear hats. They run faster than you, and look more determined; running is not exercise - it is a way of life. Get out of their way and don't try and make eye contact - t...

The final step of my home dialysis journey (bleugh, journey...sounds like I'm on The X Factor) begins on the 22nd July when Nurse Carla will arrive with a sleeping bag and, presumably, some strong coffee, and sit on my sofa all night whilst I perform my first nocturnal session. It is the dialysis equivalent of hiring a wet nurse. During a regular daytime session, nothing should go wrong unless I have lined the machine carelessly with one eye on Only Connect and consequently forgotten to connect/un-clamp/tighten something pivotal. Dermot should behave, stay quiet and not do any of his ghastly alarm-yelping. At night, however, the chances of rolling over onto the tubes and occluding the blood flow, or the needles falling out and slowly bleeding to death, are much higher, what with all the concurrent sleeping I'll be doing; when this happens Dermot senses DANGER and screams at me. Undoubtedly, my first session with Carla will be seamless; I know from experience that it is only ...