A rather unusual month

A typical month from my life looks like this:

• Work full time
• Swimming
• Strength Training
• ~20 nights of dialysis without any complications
• No EPO / Iron (as my Hemoglobin was normal)
• No nights spent in a hospital
• No surgeries
• No pain
• Good sleep
• Movies
• Eating out
• etc etc etc

This last month has been quite the opposite:

• Lot of time off from work, work part-time rest of the days
• No swimming / walking
• Physical Therapy to build strength
• Less than 20 nights on dialysis, some with several complications
• Lot of EPO / Iron as my Hemoglobin has plummeted 
• 5 nights spent in the hospital
• One major surgery - a complete hip replacement
• Lot of pain
• Very poor sleep
• Low grade fever on most days
• Shortness of breath
• etc etc etc

The hip replacement was necessitated after a hip fracture I had on Diwali day after tripping, with my left leg (which was already in trouble) bearing the brunt of the entire body weight and breaking as a result.

To make things worse, the head of the team of surgeons who operated upon me called me a few days after the surgery and told me that they had mistakenly used a wrong sized part during the surgery. Instead of using a 36 mm diameter liner, they used a 32 mm diameter liner. The medical consensus seems to be to perform corrective surgery to replace the wrong-sized liner.

For now I don't even want to think of the corrective surgery until I have recovered completely from the first surgery!

The last month has been very challenging. Trouble is I am used to a normal life. Daily Nocturnal Home HD does that to you. Spoils you. When you have a setback such as this one, you can find it difficult to cope.

I have dabbled with switching to Conservative Care multiple times in the past few weeks. The low hemoglobin and fever pull you down so much, you don't feel like doing anything.

Right now, I am just hoping for a turnaround that seems to be evading me.