Paging Dr. Nads

Oh, I don't know why I chose that title, but perhaps it grabbed your eye.

I have done dialysis in quite a few places. In a regular old dialysis unit, in a creepy dark dialysis unit, in my bedroom and livingroom. If I had held on to my NxStage I would have done dialysis parachuting out of a plane, or some such.

One of my favorite places to do dialysis, though, is in a hospital. I hate being in the hospital, but their dialysis units kinda rock. And even if you do dialysis in your hospital room, it still kinda rocks. 

For one thing, there's usually fewer patients, or just you, if you have dialysis in your hospital room.  The timing is more flexible-- you may get it really early in the day, or late at night.  They feed you while you're having your treatment-- and no, I don't usually puke from eating on dialysis (just when they pull off too much fluid).

A couple things are icing on the cake for me when I do have dialysis in the hospital-- a call button and getting to lie down in the hospital bed and  take a nap during the treatment.

I'm sure you're bored stiff with my dialysis chair woes. But really, sleeping while you're doing nocturnal dialysis is important. If I don't get enough sleep, it's bitch factor 10 (shameless plug for my new blog, www.bitchfactor10.blogspot.com) I can actually sleep in a hospital bed, if I lay it completely flat and have pillows in the right places.  I think it would be great to have hospital beds in the nocturnal units, so I'm going to make a big push for that.

A rep from a company that makes medical furniture mentioned hospital beds for nocturnal dialysis a few months ago, and I'm just now following up on that.  It maybe too late to make changes at the unit where I am now, but Corporate may be considering new spot.

Anyhoo...here's an image of the bed the rep mentioned to me. Do you think something like this would work in a nocturnal unit?

That's a pretty spiffy looking hospital bed to me. Though, in that shot, it looks like a Transformer-- More than meets the eye!   It looks light weight enough to be moved around.  And I think they'd be great for bed races, whee! Hmmm, well, we'll see, it might be too late, as I said, because the current unit just acquired some pads like they use for nappy time at day care centers.

Some day I will get to design the perfect nocturnal dialysis unit-- or even just the perfect conventional dialysis unit. Until then, I will continue to bitch and moan here. hehehe.