Happy New Year!

Lets hope for a great 2009. We went yesterday to meet with a surgeon to get prepped for dialysis. I go January 29th for him to put in an AV fistula in my left arm.
Let me back up a little.........
As stated in the last post, my numbers keep getting worse. We are definitely headed to dialysis, unless CMC gets on the ball. I am in the 10-12% kidney function range. Looking at the numbers over the past few months, I'm losing about 1-2% function a month. Hopefully things will steady off and I could remain at this point for a while, but unfortunately when the kidney function gets lower it tends to go a little quicker. Kind of like when you're running low on gas in the boat, the gas seems to go a lot faster! We certainly do not want to run out.
We've thought a lot about our choices, why does life have to be so complicated? I'm going to do hemodialysis, that's the one done in a dialysis center. It seems to have the least chance of getting an infection, but I'm really mixed about going to a dialysis center. I think it will make it too real. It's easy to 'forget' about things when I feel good.
It just really sucks to get a dose of reality. The day before Christmas Eve was one of those days. I had been feeling nauseous for a few days, but tried to blow it off. Unfortunately that is one of the major signs of kidney failure at my stage. It can mean the body is not filtering all the 'bad' things out, thus making you feel like crap. So things got worse. My doc was great, called every few hours just checking in. Then, I vomited. Not good, at all. When I told her, she was willing to wait just a little longer because I actually felt a little better after getting it out. However, we were looking at having to go to the hospital if I didn't get better for emergency dialysis. Thanks to my wonderful husband, mom and neighbors I was able to get some rest and started feeling a lot better. A Christmas wish granted. I was really not willing to spend Christmas in the hospital.
I think we're all just on edge because it is such an unknown. I've known for years this was the out come but every time I'm reminded of it it's like being told for the first time. I think we'll also feel a little more at ease once the Fistula is in. It takes about 6-16 weeks to heal so it can be used. Once that's done we're good to go for dialysis. Now we just need CMC to get on the ball getting me in so we can get the transplant stuff started.
So I'm sure this is a lot of rambling but the bottom line is, we're on our way to starting dialysis and hopefully we'll be able to wait until the fistula is ready.
We are very thankful this is something that can be fixed.