The two year anniversary of my starting dialysis is tomorrow. So, what did I get for this momentous occasion?

An infection in my fistula.

Yes, folks, there's nothing quite like looking down at one's arm, scratching the annoying itch that just won't seem to go away, and seeing puss ooze out of one's buttonhole needle site. GROSS. And, alarming...

Oh and after that I started thinking about the last few days and I realized that 1) my arm has been hurting more than usual; 2) my arm has felt "hot"; 3) today, in particular, I noticed my arm was tender over my fistula (but I chalked it up to over using my arm recently) and 4) it all makes sense now that I think about it, especially the fact that 3 of my last 4 treatments have had 'issues' at the end with my arm excessively bleeding and not wanting to clot correctly.

After mildly freaking out for a moment, I calmly called my doctor's office and had them paged. When they called back I described the aforementioned grossness and they prescribed the usual Cephalexin (Keflex), twice per day for 10 days and IV ANTIBIOTICS which I am to receive tomorrow at my treatment.

I'm lucky I caught it sooner than later... this is the kind of thing that can permanently damage a dialysis access or make someone so sick (when the infection gets into the blood) they can die. So yeah, lucky me. Seriously.

Happy Two Years on Dialysis - UGH!