OK, where to start. I have been a kidney patient since December 2004. My kidneys went from 50% function to complete failure over the space of a weekend in May 2006. Since then I have been on dialysis. Last year was the year from hell. It wasn't actually my kidney disease that put me in hospital for the majority of the year, but the procedures to give me access for dialysis.

There are two types of dialysis. Heamodialysis which uses an artificial kidney. Your blood comes out of your body and into a machine where there is a filter, this filter is the artificial kidney that filters the bad stuff out of your blood. Your blood then goes back into your body. The amount of time spent on this machine depends on whether you have any kidney function and if so how much. The less function you have the more time you do. As I have no function I was doing 4 hours three times a week. You can do this from home, but my hospital doesn't allow this so I was going to the hospital for this.

Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) uses the body's peritoneaum to filter out the bad stuff. You have a catheter in your abdomen which is how you get the fluid in and out. The dialysis solution contains Glucose and this along with the peritoneaum membrane is how the nasty stuff is filtered out of the body. This form of dialysis is done at home either manually four times a day or overnight using another machine while you sleep.

To begin with I could not have PD due to the type of disease I had. However, this all changed last year. Once my kidneys failed it was made available to me. I was on heamodialysis and for this you have a fistula. A fistula is where the vein and artery in your arm are sewn together to make the blood flow faster and then each session you have 2 big needles stuck in your arm. my first fistula failed and the second one got an aneurysm on it which got infected and had to be removed. During the operation my potassium levels soared (Potassium is one of the minerals the kidney filters out of the body). This caused my heart to go funny and the docs had to revive me. They ended up tying off the fistula. I was in HDU for 3 days. During this time I got a blood clot in my arm which had to be removed while I was awake and my arm was left open to heal on its own.

So the docs said I had no proper access for heamodialysis and had to try peritoneal. The operation for this didn't go too well either! I have a blood clotting condition so am on warfarin which has to be stopped each time I have a procedure done. When I had the first catheter put in I got a blood clot on my lung. I was given a drug to disperse this whih gave me a heamatoma, then I got scepticimia and then I had to have the heamatoma removed, again I was awake for this.

This catheter worked for a couple of months and then I got a severe case of peritonitis. This is fatal if left, but the docs managed to control it with 2 lots of antibiotics, however one of these dropped my white blood cell count to 2 so I was susceptible to infections. Once it reaches 0 you die!

Still i overcame that and came out of hospital. A week later my catheter stopped working. After 2 weeks of trying everything to get it to work, I was operated on to clear it and reposition it, but this was not successful.

After 2 weeks the catheter was removed. The Thursday before Christmas a new catheter was put in in the opposite sde of my abdomen to the first catheter. This has been in for 2 weeks and I have been using it for a week with no problems so far.

Whilst all this was going on I was having heamodialysis through a temporary line which is put into the artery in your chest which goes straight into your heart. You're awake when this is put in and it is not at all pleasant so I always ask to be sedated.

I am now waiting to have this temporary line removed and have decided that no matter what, I am going to write about it. I am hoping this helps me deal with my illness. I am also hoping someone will be interested in this and will talk to me about it if they want to know anything, otherwise I'm going to look like a right weirdo writing to thin air!