Kathy Alter relates what happens when you really have to go in the middle of a dialysis session. Alter’s account is humane and blisteringly, humiliatingly accurate. Read it if you’re a dialysis patient or know one.
In the eight years I’ve been a hemodialysis patient I can relate similar stories—although none actually during a dialysis session (he says, knocking wood)—two close misses in the dialysis chair, though. I started having uncontrollable diarrhea—I mean immediate, uncontrollable, bar-the-door, nothing’s going to keep it in, projectile diarrhea—about four years ago.
It’s a terrible experience at home and horrifying in public.
I’m starting to think it’s somehow related to the acid-alkaline balance in the body. I believe as dialysis patients, we’re building up acid as we’re building up toxins between dialysis sessions and the dialysis process radically restores (overcompensates, perhaps) the alkaline side of the balance. For me, these bouts of uncontrollable runs seem to be cyclical—and I’m in the middle of such a cycle right now.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, lowers self-esteem and one’s dignity faster and surer than needing to have someone else wipe your butt.
I’ve also learned, as Jack Nicholson’s character in The Bucket List says, to “never trust a fart.”
That’s probably lots more than you wanted to know, but if dialysis patients don’t start talking about these issues they’re never going to be resolved.
0 responses. Comments closed for this article.