Sometimes you look at a period of your life and wonder how you plowed through all the things that went on. We just finished a stretch of crazy days that started August 6th. Art went to his scheduled visit with his nephrologist. The doctor decided it was time for dialysis to start. When – the next day of course. It would require a 3 day stay in the hospital to have a catheter placed in his shoulder/upper chest to allow dialysis to take place. We had already rented a van to move our belongings from the RV to our son’s house in Fishers. We planned to stay there until we took possession of our new house. Sooo . . .
August 7 – Mary had everything packed except the kitchen in preparation for the move. We picked up the van at the rental office and met Ben and Becky at the RV. We left for the hospital and Ben & Becky packed up the kitchen, loaded the van and took our belongings to Fishers. Ben then picked up a few pieces of purchased furniture after Mary texted him pictures of the receipts she had with her at the hospital. Art had the catheter placed and experienced his first dialysis session with no problems. Mary then met Ben at the van rental office to return the van and go back to Fishers.
August 8 – Art continued his stay in the hospital with another session of dialysis during which he experienced leg cramps and nausea from too much fluid being removed from his system too quickly. The nurses resolved the problem – but this experience was not so pleasant. Mary spent the morning cleaning at the RV then went to the hospital for the afternoon, then back to Fishers for the night.
August 9 – Another day just like the one before with one big exception – Art did not have any problems with the dialysis. Yea! Mary finished the cleaning at the RV then went to the hospital to wait for Art to be discharged.
August 11 – We met prospective buyers at the RV in the morning. They spent 3 hours with us looking at it. We received a call later that evening that they would send a purchase agreement contingent on an inspection and repair of one of the AC units. Woohoo!!
The week of August 12 th was the first week of regular dialysis scheduled for Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Monday and Wednesday went off without a hitch.
August 16th – We met the RV inspector and one of the buyers for our RV for a formal inspection. Art was experiencing some aches and pains but didn’t think much about it. Later that day he went to his dialysis appointment and near the end of the session his temperature started to climb dramatically – so they told him to go to the emergency room at the hospital. They had to admit him and went about doing a variety of tests and blood cultures to try to identify the infection.
August 17th and 18th – Art was in the critical care unit of the hospital mainly so they could hook him up to the appropriate monitoring devices. His fever “broke” on Sunday night. During that time we were also working with a certified RV repair person who is repairing one of the AC units on the RV which is still under warranty – one of the conditions of the sale of RV … so this is important.
August 19th – Art was moved to a new room with the general population and was told he might spend a couple more days. However, when the doctors huddled they decided he was OK to go home and he would receive some strong antibiotics during dialysis sessions and schedule the catheter to be replaced as an out-patient procedure. So he received dialysis in the hospital and then was released to go home.
August 21st – Regularly scheduled dialysis – no problems.
August 22nd – We did a walk-through of our new home before closing on Friday and then went to the hospital for the catheter replacement. As Art will describe the experience…the replacement procedure was not a good day – a lot of pain involved. After a few hours he was released and we went home.
August 23rd – Closed on the house and we were told the sellers would be out by Sunday evening. After the closing Art went to his scheduled dialysis (4 hours plus travel time).
August 24th – We received a call that the sellers were officially out of the house – a day early! – so we took some electronics and a few boxes to the new house and checked everything out.
August 25th – Tim, Bonnie, Matt, Melissa and Becky all pitched in and we took a few loads of boxes to the new house. Tim tied one of our mattresses and box springs to the roof of his jeep and hauled that too. So we felt like college students as we slept on the floor that night.
August 26th – a few more loads were completed and Mary is organizing the cabinets and storage. Art received a call asking if he could come in early for dialysis for the day so he left.
Later this week we are renting a high-top van to move the larger pieces of furniture. Hopefully we will stay healthy leading toward the anticipated transplant which looks like it will take place the first part of October. Also we hope to close on the RV within the next couple of weeks – one less thing to worry about.
“crazy” days
