I have some blog posts in the works, but I keep being unable to edit them. It's been difficult because I've been working on some medical stuff. It can quickly get annoying how difficult it is to work on medical things, even if they aren't your direct problem, and instead you are working on them in service of helping with your main problem.
On a whim, at the beginning of February, I went into my vascular surgeon's office to follow up on a failed access that we'll call #4. It was that surgeon's first attempt, and it was my first graft, after three failed fistulas.
His idea was to create a new graft, #5, slightly further up my arm. The surgery happened a week later, on my birthdate, and was a success. Then three days later at plasma exchange, it closed off.
So the literal next week, I was in having #6 created. That went well, but it also closed off after just a few days. The trouble with that one, which was a more advanced type of graft that combines a regular graft with a catheter so that outflow happens in a place it's less likely to get clotted, in a larger vein.
The closure of the HeRO graft was more traumatic than is strictly ideal. I think at this point a lot of the blood for that area is coming from my arm, and when the HeRO clotted, what happened was it and the other catheter came loose from the vein they're inserted into and if I move into the wrong position, it felt like I couldn't move blood.
After getting another procedure to de-clot the HeRO once more, things got better. I received plasma with no trouble. I eventually followed up with the surgeon and they approved it for use in the next few weeks.
That next few weeks was this past weekend. We used it for the return line during plasma exchange, and the nurses and nephrologists who manage my plasma exchange treatments are pleased with the results. There are a few aspects to the graft I didn't expect, including that they run it close to the maximum speed of the machine, and that it bleeds for several minutes after the run is done.
In retrospect, these things shouldn't be surprising to me. You've poked a hole in the plastic tube carrying a large amount of blood very quickly, of course it's going to spew a little.
For a few weeks, I was on leave from work and even when I returned, my energy to do an awful lot of stuff after work has been a lot less of late. I'm sure it'll recover naturally over the next few weeks, but I was not up to writing when I was between surgeries and hanging out recovering.
I'm hoping on returning to my normal posting schedule. I'll post this and then I'll work on some things I have in my drafts folder, and then I'll work on some new takes probably on some of those same issues.