Peritoneal Good days vs bad days

[agoodday2u]

Do you have more good days or bad days? I'm hoping there is someone who has more good days and can tell me why you think you have more good days than bad. I'm hoping to learn from your experience what we can do to make my husband feel better.

[M3Riddler]

Re: Peritoneal Good days vs bad days

Do you have more good days or bad days? I'm hoping there is someone who has more good days and can tell me why you think you have more good days than bad. I'm hoping to learn from your experience what we can do to make my husband feel better.

Agoodadday2u,

Well if you considering starting PD at age14, finishing high school with high honors, graduating college with a 4 year degree while holding 2 jobs then I would consider this a good thing while i was on PD... Commitment and Dedication. Many docs give dialysis a bad label to start with and many just follow the role and decide they are too sick to do anything with their life. You can live a great life on Dialysis. i have been doing so for over 18 years....

///M3R

[lcavender]

Re: Peritoneal Good days vs bad days

I've only been on PD for a year and overall I'd say that I have more good days than bad ones. I still work full-time and do just about everything I did before PD. I still get really tired, but not nearly as bad as before. No doubt about it, dialysis stinks, but it beats reading your obit in the newspaper.

[davpro]

Re: Peritoneal Good days vs bad days

Well I found that actually doing PD was nothing, I got into my routine and did it with total compliance and felt very well for the most part. I took up skiing and dated and had a perfectly normal life. In retrospect I suppose I didn't feel as good as I do now post transplant... but I wasn't exactly an invalid... so yes I had far more good days than bad on PD. Didn't care for the cycler though it interupted my sleep to much so I did CAPD. If there was one thing that annoyed me about it it was hauling all the paraphnalia around with me when I went away for longer than a day. It would have been great if you could just go to a pharmacy in a strange town and pick up a few bags if you decided to extend a stay and essentially that is my only pet peeve about it... beats hemo hands down.

[jeffmoore]

Re: Peritoneal Good days vs bad days

Well I found that actually doing PD was nothing, I got into my routine and did it with total compliance and felt very well for the most part. I took up skiing and dated and had a perfectly normal life. In retrospect I suppose I didn't feel as good as I do now post transplant... but I wasn't exactly an invalid... so yes I had far more good days than bad on PD. Didn't care for the cycler though it interupted my sleep to much so I did CAPD. If there was one thing that annoyed me about it it was hauling all the paraphnalia around with me when I went away for longer than a day. It would have been great if you could just go to a pharmacy in a strange town and pick up a few bags if you decided to extend a stay and essentially that is my only pet peeve about it... beats hemo hands down.

well said davpro, my sentiments exactly, PD is far less taxing on the body than Hemo, only thing i don't like about it, is the protruding stomach, from all the dialysate that has to dwell, and of course my development of a hernia, because of my obviously small framed body. All in all, it has been better for me, these past ten years.
Glo

[agoodday2u]

Re: Peritoneal Good days vs bad days

Thank you all! That's really good news. My husband was doing well a month or so ago, but now he just seems to have very little energy and spends much of his day resting on the sofa.

You all have given me hope and also clarified for me that what he is going through may not be normal. I just appreciate it very much and I am sure when I pass this information along to him that he will appreciate it too!

Did you follow the PD diet prescribed for you very carefully? Did you exercise? Did you do anything that you can think of that made your adjustment to PD seem less difficult than it is for him?

He is doing the overnight dialysis and the noise doesn't bother him. At this point though, I really don't think he could do this by himself. I'm proud of all of you!!!

agoodday2u

[Marina]

Re: Peritoneal Good days vs bad days

I did CAPD for 6 1/2 yrs with NO problems!
My energy was pretty good, I was able to keep my 32-40hr/week job (stocking shelves in a supermarket nonetheless).
The only time I felt tired and/or drained was when my hemoglobin, sodium and/or B/P were low. But all those situations had pretty simple solutions.

Having a good relationship with your nurses and communicating your concerns are very important. I was SO VERY BLESSED to have such great PD nurses. They were a Godsend!!!

Your husband will have some good and some not so good days, but that goes even for healthy folks.

Diet was VERY VERY important to me. ALthough when phosphorus was on the low side, I was allowed to eat a few phos foods here and there. Everything in moderation. I always reminded myself of what harm could come from having high phos levels. It was better to skip that 1 oz cheese than to deal with Cardio vascular problems. My phos levels were always within acceptable ranges (3.0-4.3 + - )
Of course the decision to follow a renal diet is very individual, we must all decided for ourselves. For me, it was more about staying as healthy as possible, than splurging on a pc of cheese. That's just me though

The beauty of PD (v.s. Hemo) is that you have control of your exchanges and when you do them. It's a pc of cake to do as well. Well, I can only speak for manual exchanges since I never used a cycler.

Take care!!