My husband experienced some signs of dementia and also unexplained occasional vomiting earlier this year. I attributed the dementia to aging, and the vomiting to the chemistry of dialysis.
By late summer the labs were not good. The doctor said that perhaps the peritoneal dialysis was not working well for him and he might have to go on hemodialysis permanently.
But then something our dialysis nurse said to me really got me to thinking. Most of his vomiting happened at suppertime. By then the solution left in him by the dialysis cycler had been in since about 7:30 a.m. And I remembered that after his hospitalization in the summer, he had been on hemodialysis (since rehab facilities won't do peritoneal dialysis...), and the problems had gotten better. So perhaps having hemodialysis occasionally would help, and/or adding a manual exchange late in the date before bedtime.
We tried both. Since the hemo port had not yet been removed, our doctor agreed to have one hemodialysis session added (on top of his daily use of the cycler). AND he did a manual exchange. Through trial and error we found that doing that additional exchange about 7 p.m. worked best (he started the cycler a bit after 9 p.m. and it runs for 10 hours every night).
Voila! The dementia cleared up and the vomiting stopped. The lab results are great! In fact, our nephrologist said he didn't see how they could be any better.
So the takeaway lesson, I think, is that the toxins had started to reabsorb. Every body is different! Don't be taken in by rigid rules about schedules. It is ok to mix manual and automatic exchanges. AND it may be helpful to use hemodialysis if you happen to have both the port and the catheter.
It helps that we have the world's best nephrologist (we think!). He listens and he thinks and he cares. He is willing to try whatever might work.
