Brutkey

Ángela Stella Matutina
@angelastella@social.treehouse.systems

Howdy, fuckos!

This is from a friend with end-stage kidney failure, for you ableist assholes. Translation not just highly idiosyncratic, as always; at some points I've reworked whole paragraphs and shifted the meaning too. (He's OK with that.) Neither he nor I will answer questions: go educate yourself.

Long post chronicling a day in the life of a person undergoing hemodialysis.I wake up early. I feed the cats, change their water. Normal morning routine.My ride to the kidney clinic arrives at 10:40 AM.Half-hour wait for the hemodialysis room; I weigh myself, sign paperwork, make ready my couch.They stick in the needle [about 2 mm outer diameter; it goes into a port], plug me into the machine, and administer heparin [anticoagulant]. From then on, it's four hours and a quarter keeping the pierced arm completely immobile.They unplug me and bandage my arm. Fifteen minutes wait for coagulation.I weigh myself again, check I'm not that dizzy, catch my ride back home; I'll need to rest at least two hours before even thinking of making any effort: low blood pressure and low sugar too.Seven hours multiplied by three days a week I can't do anything but read. Can't sleep because the hemodialysis room is noisy: machines often get clogged and sound alarms, patients and staff talk, needles must be reset, they bring mid-session snacks and so on.The very idea of this disability being minor or survivable without financial support is ridiculous.My life literally hangs on the strict continuity of hemodialysis sessions. Two days between them, maximum. In the third day I feel intoxicated already; the fourth brings dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and a terrifying conjunction of tremors, and itching in limbs, hands and feet: you feel the toxins in your blood. Fifth day, signs and symptoms become desperate. With the sixth comes death.Even when things go well there are complications:The routine becomes mind-numbing.Infections are a perpetual risk, from hepatitis to full-blown septicemia.A certain needle phobia develops.Never-ending lightheadedness, long dead hours day after day and the even longer wait for a transplant mess with your mind: depression, insomnia, eating disorders become common.When people say the disabled "have it easy" or "don't want to work like everyone else" they show no understanding of what it's like to live with this or any other disability. Opinions like these are at best uninformed--and naturally at its worst come from malicious misinformation.