This week I finished my dialysis rotation–it was also the last week of spring semester! I’ll be on break for the next few weeks before our six-week summer term. My dietetic internship will officially be over the end of June/early July! Crazy! To catch up with my previous dialysis experience, check out:
DI: Week 30 – Advocacy Day and Starting Dialysis
My week looked like this:
Monday:
It was a busy day at the dialysis clinic! We rounded on all of the patients and then I spent more time counseling one patient in particular. She was retaining a lot of fluid in between dialysis sessions. Patients on dialysis can only drink a certain amount of fluid because their kidneys often either can’t make urine, or make inadequate amounts. Since the kidneys are responsible for fluid balance in the body, if they aren’t working you retain most of the fluid you drink. This woman was having a problem retaining fluid despite trying to cut back on how much she was drinking. Because she’s very short, she might need to cut back on fluid even more than other dialysis patients. We discussed the challenges around her fluid restriction and potential solutions. She’ll keep a food/fluid log for a few days too and bring it back for the dietitian to look over to see if there are other possible problem areas. Around lunchtime, we had a rep come in to talk about dialysis parenteral nutrition. It was really interesting to learn about the differences between parenteral (feeding through a vein) nutrition in the hospital setting versus dialysis parenteral nutrition. In the dialysis setting, if patients really aren’t able to meet their protein needs they may be put on parenteral nutrition just while they’re on dialysis. After the presentation I had to leave early to get to my night class on time.
At our night class we all had our final presentations. Each of us chose a topic in nutrition where there’s a lot of confusion and did a review of the current research on our topic. Some topics covered were probiotics and weight loss, turmeric and arthritis, and creatine and muscle growth. My presentation was about soy and breast cancer, and how there is no evidence that soy increases the risk for developing breast cancer. All of the presentations were very interesting!
Tuesday:
Last day of my dialysis rotation–it went quick! I was actually at a different clinic today because the dietitian I’m working with covers two different locations. We did rounds with all the patients again, and I got a tour of this location. Then I did an initial assessment on a home peritoneal dialysis patient. Peritoneal dialysis is where they put a solution in their belly area to clean their blood every day. This is something that patients can do at home if they’d like. After meeting with this patient, we had a clinic-wide meeting. Once a week, the nurse, social worker, and dietitian have a meeting to discuss patient compliance and areas of improvement. Then, just like that, my dialysis rotation was over.
Wednesday:
Since my supervised practice is over (though technically the semester is not), I drove to Minnesota today. I’ll be spending the next 3-4 week break in Minnesota before finishing the last 6 weeks of my internship. It feels a little weird to have such a long break in between semesters, especially since we only have 6 weeks left, but I’ll take it!
Thursday:
I spent today hanging out with Spencer and Maggie. The weather has been really nice, so we went for a nice long walk yesterday and today. I also spent some time working on my final paper for my night class which is due on Monday.
Friday:
More working on my paper!
Weekend:
It was my dad’s birthday weekend, so we went out for dinner and to a couple of breweries to celebrate. I finished and submitted my last paper, so my semester is officially over!
During my break I’ll continue to write brief weekly updates. My summer semester officially starts May 21st, so I’ll be back with my internship-specific updates then. Until next week!