WonderWeasel91

That's got to be irritating. Would you say you have a short fuse when it comes to those type of jokes?

Before I actually read the comments, I texted my brothers and told them to have someone melt my ashes into a bong. It made me laugh pretty hard to see that someone else had the same idea.

It really depends on how well you take care of yourself. Some patients don't get transplants. Usually elderly patients stay on dialysis until they pass away.

Patients at a dialysis center have to watch their fluid intake and diet. Patients typically go through treatments every other day. If you have a patient that typically presents on their treatment day with 2.1kg of fluid since their last weigh in (usually at the end of their last treatment) they'll be much better off in the end than someone who brings in 5.4kg of fluid, which is quite a bit.

In dialysis, we pull off the fluid weight during treatment, and it causes a significant drop in blood pressure usually. It has a greater effect on someone that comes in fluid overloaded, and in turn is much harder on the heart of that person as opposed to someone who manages their fluids better. Being that hard on your heart is not good for you. There's a number of heart problems that can come about from a patient habitually being fluid overloaded.

There's more to it then that. Diet is important because certain electrolytes and things are removed and replaced during dialysis, and someone that eats a lot of potassium can expect to have heart problems if they don't change their diet. There's also things like mineral bone disease brought about by an abundance of phosphorous, which prevents calcium from getting to bones. All of these things play a role in quality and longevity of life in a dialysis patient.

Tl:Dr; It depends.

Shit, that's Texas in general right there. (Mexicans and white rednecks.)

Funny. I'm on break from my job....as a nurse in a dialysis center, and I happened upon this AMA.

I guess I'd like to know, what's it like being probably one of the youngest people in your center? Most of my patients are 45+ years of age, many of them disabled and missing limbs due to uncontrolled diabetes. Do you do treatments the typical 3 days a week in a center, or are you doing PD at home?

If you've been managing CKD since you were around five, have you been dialyzing since then as well, or did you have enough kidney function to stay out of dialysis for a while?