Carlos Garcia in the weeks before me, I read about how they had spent considerable time telling him about dialysis and how they recommended that he start dialysis as soon as possible or he would soon die. I read how they had spent even more time trying to get him to agree to do it after he had adamantly refused time and time again.
make it stop
The distress call came to me fourth-hand in the form of an email. The colleague of a colleague’s wife’s father wondered if I could help because the father was contemplating stopping the peritoneal dialysis his wife had been helping him do at home for the last several years.
what we could have done
The old woman died. I heard she slept more and more of the days away until one day she stopped talking and eating in the awake moments. Then her breathing slowed and her breaths shallowed until she stopped breathing altogether.
change of plan
I watched as two dialysis technicians positioned Ms. L for transfer from the dialysis chair to wheelchair. Before last summer, she could do this herself. Push herself to a stand using the arms of her wheelchair, take two steps, and sit down again in a different chair. Now that transfer required two technicians to hoist her in the blue net she sat on by the Hoyer lift, suspend her in the air, swing her over to her wheelchair, and ease her down again.