There should be a prime-time game show about my life.

OK, so I started PD last night. I decided not to do exchanges during the day yesterday, because it's hard to eat with all that fluid filling me up. However, I decided that an overnight exchange would be all right, a good way to start.

About 5:15 this morning, my knees were telling me I was dehydrated. You may not have known that a certain kind of leg cramps can be a sign of dehydration. I didn't before all this happened. I went downstairs and fixed a cup of miso, which is very high in sodium. Salty fluids, that's what you drink to fix dialysis-related dehydration.

It's the same principle as Gatorade, except it's not green and vaguely frooty. So, I'm standing in the dark kitchen thinking I ought to eat something, but I thought back to my before bed glucose reading and decided I'd be all right until time to get up.

Now, you should understand how very nebulous a concept "time to get up" has always been to me. It's time to get up when I'm good and ready, and probably 15 minutes after that. The reason for this is that I don't fall asleep easily, so I tend to get better sleep toward the end of my sleeping time. If you wake me up in the middle of a sleep cycle, I just barely speak English.

Suffice it to say that I should have been out of bed eating something by 8, but I slept until 9:30. My legs cramped again, this time from low sugar. It took roughly an hour before I could stand up. On the other hand, I've learned with some consistency that at 70 mg/dL, I'm just barely together enough to take a reading of my blood sugar.

That's good to know. I used to be able to stand up at 50, but I think the difference is that I was generally already standing.

The problem? The fluid I use for dialysis is made of water, sugar, and other stuff. I get higher readings after instillation, and it's not that the reading is artifically high, but I don't really know how to cope. I remarked, after I could speak, that I didn't even know which doctor to call about this problem. I'll see them both next week, anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

I wonder if I'll ever get another good night's sleep, though.

before - after