I dialyze six nights a week, about seven hours each night. I take Sundays off.
I swim six days a week in the morning. Wednesdays, the pool is closed for maintenance.
How are these related? Well, I usually don't swim the morning after I don't dialyze. So, until now I wouldn't swim on Mondays because I did not dialyze on Sunday nights.
Why wouldn't I swim the morning after the night of no dialysis? I feel a little heavy in my chest the day after I don't dialyze. It is probably excess fluid. It could also be that I am so used to being almost close to my dry weight that even a little fluid makes me uncomfortable (which is actually a bad sign because I am going to be dialyzing irregularly during my US trip in July - anyway, we'll deal with that later).
So, I don't swim on Mondays because I don't dialyze on Sundays. And Wednesdays the pool is closed. So, that way I end up missing two days of swimming during the week.
So, what I now do (with the great co-operation of the two techs from NephroPlus - thanks guys!) is to dialyze on Sundays and skip dialysis on Tuesdays. That way I coincide my dialysis weekly off with the pool weekly off!
This has had another unintended benefit. Sundays being a holiday I am generally not that busy plus I usually do a movie and dinner out with my parents. These are all sure recipes for fluid intake disasters! So, if I dialyze on Sundays, I can be sure that all that extra fluid is removed without any delay.
'A stroke of genius', did I hear you say? Thanks!
... http://www.kamaldshah.com/2012/04/small-tweak-to-my-dialysis-schedule.html
