Old Dog Does New Tricks with Dialysis Machines

Abigail and Mon, a photo by Uberdoog on Flickr.

Everyone admires excellence when they see it. A pilot smoothly landing a plane. A ski jumper slaloming down a course. Or Roy, head nurse of the Hemodialysis Unit, setting up the arterial blood lines of the dialysis machines. 


What’s that? Did I say dialysis machines? Yup, you read right. You’ve heard of dialysis, right? That’s when your kidneys decide to go on ahead of the rest of you. The rest of you gets messed up because your blood builds up toxins and water builds up too. For that you need dialysis. Dialysis machines are machines the size of two personal refrigerators stacked atop each other and they do the job that two little kidneys, individually smaller than your fist, did. Better than any dialysis machine. But what choice do you have? 


Let’s get back to Roy. It's 4 in the morning, he's racing through the set up of the machines. Washing this, plugging that, pushing these buttons, inverting cartridges, purging excess, heck if I know.
Watching Roy is watching excellence. Working with an economy of motion, purposefulness and fluidity, he got one of the machines harnessed and ready to go in no time. 


Admiring excellence is like admiring the tip of an iceberg, 90% of their mass is out of sight. With excellence, what you don’t see is the hard work, perseverance from day to day, or the bad hair days with their terrible balls-ups. But I guess it that would be an unfair comparison. Excellence probably hides at least 99% of practice and work. 


“Great!” I thought to myself, I have 98 more days to get a little better, but most likely nowhere near as good as Roy. But I was just being flippant and was not actually bothered. The good thing about Nursing is it’s not a competition. At least, not in the usual sense. 


All I want these days is a new bag. While the rest of my contemporaries are packing up and looking forward to retirement, I’m moving into new and unexplored territory. I’m having to toughen up, physically and mentally. I’m having to become game, quick, flexible, alert and responsive. If you’re young, you’ll find it hard to imagine how inertia can slow down a middle-aged man. The habits of seeking comfort and familiarity, formed of earlier decades have to be gradually broken. It hurts, but then I have seen the changes to adapt.   And the changes feel good. I can see the banner in my head: Old Dog Learns New Trick. So Roy , how do you set up the dialysis machine again?


Originally posted Jan 6, 2010