The temporary access catheter got one use before a permanent one was inserted the next day. Though my stay in Scottsbluff at the Regional West Medical Center was short, it was busy.

I am home now. Bloody hell! You can’t imagine how much blood, shooting five feet / 1,54 meters out from one’s body, comes from a ruptured pseudoaneurysm! The apartment, as noted my friend Chris in guest post 3, was a murder scene except for a missing body. Ugh!

My  friend Judy took care of the kitty boys, who boycotted the wet kitty food. (Of course! Kitty Tummy Time told them Judy didn’t feed them wet food at the same time I do.)

Click on the photo next to mine above and you can read what the surgeon who created the fistula in the first place had to say about the fistula a bit longer than three years after he created it, when it failed spectacularly in, well, bloody hell.

Yes, I’d just stepped out of the shower and was drying off when the shower of blood began. The pseudoaneurysm began to swell weeks ago, which prompted the dialysis unit nurses to make me an appointment with Dr. Hughes. Ironically, it was for this past Monday. Of course, it ruptured on Saturday. Serendipity.

I was especially pleased to be naked and covered in blood when the first responders arrived. Fortunately, I’ve been hospitalized enough that “dignity” and “modesty” no longer apply to how I handled that. (With no dignity and to hell with modesty. I was naked and covered in blood, sir, madame, miss, and ms.! Toss a sheet around me and it’s bloody toga party time! So they did.)

A short time in the emergency room at Box Butte General Hospital, my local hospital, was sufficient for the on duty doctor to establish nothing but a surgeon could handle my issue, so I was transported to Scottsbluff (53.8 miles/ 86,6 kilometers away), where the surgeon (Dr. Hughes) met me, in time, in the emergency room there. He removed the temporary bandage applied in Alliance, blood spurted out of the wrecked fistula, and he told me an operation was needed, that the fistula was toast! 

I will get a new fistula later , perhaps September, but am stuck with catheters sticking out of my chest till them. The worst part of the catheters (literally infection control, though I’ve never had an issue with infections around catheters) is a return to sponge baths. You aren’t supposed to get them wet. Though I’ve tried various tricks to avoid getting catheters wet in past, none worked without fail. Sooo, it’s sit in a bath chair, wash myself down with a soapy wash cloth, rinse myself off with the wash cloth after rinsing the soap out of it, and rue the day I lost the best advantage of fistulas: one can shower and get really clean with one of those!

Yeah, those spots on the wall under under Andy are blood splatter! Dougy was on the sill with Andy shortly before I took this photo, but left before the &$%#@ smart phone completed its start up routine, annoyed me with advertisement for stuff I will never buy and other little annoyances. That’s another story. See next paragraph!

When I finally left a trail of blood to my smart phone, which was in the front room, I had my right hand applying pressure of the bloody ruptured pseudoaneurysm. I am right handed. So, with my left hand, I tried to get through all the phone’s  start up routine, annoyed me with advertisement for stuff I will never buy and other little annoyances to get to the place I could type 911 (the emergency number in the USA). 

The bloody phone (both a curse and a literal fact by that time) took forever to let me call 911.  The thought going through my head was “I could bleed out and die in the time this phone takes to let me make an emergency call to the police dispatcher!” I was terrorized!!! As we say in America, no shit! I was in fear for my very existance!)

Eventually, in mega-slowtime, the phone (you know, why they call them “phones”) finally showed the numeric keypad. In my bled-out state, I typed 991 instead of 911, then I had a heck of a time finding the bloody way back to a fresh start at typing the right number to get help. Did I mention I exhausted my entire vocabulary of vile words learned in the US Army during this long phone ordeal? No? Well, I did! 

The ambulance with the Emergency Medical Technicians and the police cruisers with the police arrived so fast, I swear they took less time to be at my aid than the whole ordeal of making the 911 phone call took to make. They were magnificent! So were the medical staff of both hospitals and the EMTs on the ambulance that took me to Regional West, not to forget those from the Alliance Fire Department who took me to the Box Butte General Hospital in Alliance.

As for my telephone service, I believe I shall make a little visit to theitr local shop and quietly, in excruciating (and very bloody) detail describe how their &$%#@ smart phone  put my life at peril. You know, me, the guy who pays almost $100 a month so I can get endless advertisments and crap I don’t want so I have a means of communication if I am experiencing a literal blood bath!

The CEO of Viaero Wireless – yes, I name them to shame them! –  deserves to have a print out of this post so he/she can appreciate what happens when a  &$%#@ smart phone start up routine and all those unwanted advertisements and crap imperil their customer! I repeat: I was terrorized and in fear for my life when all this went on. You can’t imagine how much blood you “leak” when a fistula goes bad.

=(^+^)=

Some friends suggested this is the time to subscribe to one of those “Help! I’ve fallen and cant’t get up!” services. I think they have something. I’m looking into it!