Dialysis from the sharp end of the needle

Poem: speak

post by Anna Bennett
(Poem by Vidal Alcolea)

In an living example that CKD touches everyone, Vidal Alcolea, a published playwright, poet and artist is the author of DSEN's Saturday Poem.  His book of poetry and painting is available here. 

From a town Northern Spain, Vidal paints, writes poetry and blogs in between his incenter dialysis treatments.  This poem is his latest Poetry on Dialysis Continued post.

speak
by Vidal Alcolea

Say it now
I saw a face behind a veil of snow
There was nothing to it but silence
A silence like death, which took away all of its beauty
And made it akin to a stone, a wall, something without emotion,
without
anything to say.

I saw your beloved face and it was suddenly too late
To understand that it willed to communicate nothing
Just a silence which you mistook for harmony
And which rammed my own shout of pain
Right back into my throat.

So this is the bloodless beauty I was taught to seek and take
as my soul companion...

Oh say it now for you are living
and nothing that lives can be that empty
Don´t you know humans were given a voice
which makes them more tender
And vulnerable than the trees or the animals?

Oh you must know Silence is not a retort but an act of cruelty.
Silence is arrogant: it is what the cold gods give back
when you look up in fear to ask them a question.

Poem: Sonofagun, Why Me?

post by Anna Bennett
(Poem by Vidal Alcolea)

Here is the fourth poem from the blog:  Poetry on Dialysis.  It just has four entries all published in April 2008.  In an living example that CKD touches everyone, Vidal Alcolea is a published playwright, poet and artist.  His book is available here.

Vidal has a new blog: Poetry on Dialysis Continued,it is not in the traditional format that I have edited his work into as written below, it is eloquent, sometimes heartbreaking prose. With the author's permission, DSEN will be cross posting in the future.

Sonofagun, Why Me?
By Vidal Alcolea

Something is very obvious to me
after having been told my kidneys are toast and
I have to be hooked to a machine thrice a week
in order not to be history quite yet:

 I am not the same person I was before this situation developed.
And I’m not only referring
to the predictable decrease of energy levels,
testosterone levels and
Idiocy levels
which are responsible for the little happiness most men experience when healthy,
but also to the way I see the world around me.

I think about the person I was not so long ago, say,
walking down a sunny street in Toronto,
as the little front gardens bloom in early spring.
The air is still cool, the sky is a marvellous blue.

Jennifer walks next to me.
We are going somewhere in little India for dinner,
or to little Italy for a coffee,
or across the Broadview bridge to the annex,
to meet some friends at future bakery and talk about art,
or politics,
or whatever...

I am experiencing the wonderful carelessness of health.
We, Jennifer and I,
are making plans to move to Spain.
It is all in the future.
It may or may not happen.
I have no idea yet that it will happen,
that soon we will be living in northern Spain,
where I will work as a teacher and have a child,
shortly before suffering end stage renal failure and being subjected to dialysis.

Now I am on the other side of that equation.
What I did not suspect would happen,
did in fact happen.

And I remember that sweet life far away, in Toronto,
seemingly a million years ago,
and see myself and Jennifer walking down a sunny street,
and ask my self why the fuck it is that we cannot freeze time
and stay forever
in one of those happy instants we remember once they are gone,
in times of fear and grief.

Yeah, what the hell is wrong with life?

reformatted from the original source Poetry on Dialysis

Poem: Another Day Another Scare

Posted by Anna Bennett
(Poem by Vidal Alcolea)

Here is a third poem from the blog:  Poetry on Dialysis.  If DSEN were built of brick and wood, Vidal would be our artist in residence.  His prose speaks to us, and speaks for us.  He has a new blog: Poetry on Dialysis Continued, and he has allowed DSEN to cross post - for this we are truly enriched.

Vidal Alcolea is a published poet and artist.  His book is available here.  He has written this poem about dialysis, his first diagnosis, permcath placement and fear then resolve.  This poem is just one of four all published in April 2008.

Another Day Another Scare
  by Vidal Alcolea

The nurses say, jokingly, that I'm not a veteran yet.
When I am a veteran, I won’t feel so nervous about dialysis.

I see the other people who come to dialysis with me.
They seem totally comfortable with what’s going on.
I suspect that somehow
they’ve been reduced to utter resignation
by the circumstances, and accept the unpleasant procedure patiently.

Revolutionary ideas really are out of place in a dialysis facility.
All you can do is take what comes and
try not to get upset.

More often than not
you want to pray that the force grant you serenity, at least.

Well, the nurses are right. I’m not a veteran.
I was diagnosed with end stage renal failure three weeks ago.
It all happened very suddenly,
and I was told
that I needed to have a catheter implanted in my jugular vein right away,
as an access to my blood stream,
because I needed dialysis immediately,
given the ridiculously alarming results of my most recent blood test.

I had never been in such a situation before.
The idea of letting someone stick a tube into my jugular was truly nauseating and fearful.
I was standing in a very ample hospital room,
with huge windows letting the sun light flow in and
a distant view of green hills and snow-capped mountains.
I just wanted to get out of the hospital,
go to the bus station and buy a ticket
to somewhere in those mountains,
and lie in the sun, on the snow, to die.

I asked the doctor if there was an alternative.
He said no.
I would most likely die within days or weeks if I didn’t start dialysis.
I said to him, very politely..." do you mind if I go in the bathroom and vomit?"
he smiled kindly and said
 " my friend, go and do what you need to do. It’s a tough call for you. I understand"
and I did go in the bathroom and gave in to the nausea,
but could not actually vomit.
Instead, I broke out in a cold sweat.
When I came out of the bathroom,
the doctor and the nurses where standing there
waiting to begin the procedure.
" I don’t know if I can do this" I said
"I’ve never been so terrified in my life. I think I might rather die"

One of the nurses looked at me
and said that some people who feel too old for the treatment choose to die,
as do others who cannot stand the idea of depending on a machine for life,
but a lot of people see dialysis as a positive thing
which allows them to stay around their loved ones for a long period of time.
¨ I heard you have a two year old son" she said.

My little son’s beautiful face came to mind like a calming wind,
his eyes, the colour of the ocean and filled with wonder,
his smile...and I knew that, no matter what, I had to go through with this.
It was just life.
It was what happens to humans.

The dark night of the soul, if you will.
I would go through it. Suddenly I felt calmer. I said to the doctor, "ok. Go ahead¨

As it turned out, the actual operation was quite painless.
As it usually happens, the fear was more devastating than the reality.

That very day I went through dialysis for the first time.
I can’t honestly say that it was a nice experience.
But it is nice to get home every night and see my child and my wife.

Also, my perception of human existence is beginning to change because of my situation,
and I think I understand the fragility of the human beings,
and also their defects,
a lot more deeply than before.

reformatted from the original source Poetry on Dialysis

Poem: I Will Drink No More Forever

By Anna Bennett
(Poem by Vidal Alcolea)

Here is a second poem from the blog:  Poetry on Dialysis.  It just has four entries all published in April 2008.  Vidal Alcolea is a playwright, poet and artist.  His book is available here.

I Will Drink No More Forever
                                            By Vidal Alcolea

The days of wine are gone for sure.
Roses there never were any.

The million or so cigarettes with which I drew
the symbols of my life on earth in the air
are a horrid memory which causes me
feelings of regret and culpability.

What I am sucking into my system now
through tubes stuck in my veins
are serum and heparin,
a substance they inject into you when you are on dialysis.
I forget what it is for, exactly...

Once there used to be many people
sitting around the cafe table drinking and smoking
and talking all kinds of nonsense.
It was good.
It was beautiful.

A lot of those characters were eccentric,
perhaps crazy.
They all were unforgettable.
Some are still alive.
A lot have died.
Time has changed. Everything has become something else.

There is no one by my hospital bed pouring wine into a glass,
or lighting a cigarette.
Those things are surely responsible,
at least partly,
for my being here now,
dependent on a machine to cleanse my blood and go on living.

Yeah, they were terrible things to do,
smoking and drinking so much.
But it was beautiful.

And I smoked and drank for many years,
while I pondered about
the beauty of people and the strangeness of the seasons,
and fell in love
and painted paintings I thought were great.

All before friends began to die
one after another and
death planted itself in my mind
like a great black tree in a garden full of snow.
And now I am going through my own struggle with disease and
my own mortality is before me at all times.

But I think back to those days
and see that they were innocent.

I can tell you I long to go back to those places,
wherever they are in the time that has vanished,
and find those people who no longer inhabit the present,
sit at the table, and drink without care,
until I feel like breaking into a wild song,
and worry about absolutely nothing.

reformatted from the original source Poetry on Dialysis

Poetry on Dialysis

By Anna Bennett
(Poem by Vidal Alcolea)

While looking around the corners of the web, I stumbled across the blog:  Poetry on Dialysis.  It just has four entries all published in April 2008.  Vidal Alcolea is a published poet and artist, his book is available here.

Here is the first, very powerful title poem:

Poetry on Dialysis
By Vidal Alcolea

I lie in the hospital bed with tubes coming out of my neck
through which the blood flows out of and into my veins again,
passing through a machine
which produces a funny noise
which reminds me of dreams I have had
in which I was under water.

The longer I lie in this bed
the farther I feel from matter,
from substance,
and my mind falls into a sort of nervous stupor.

I can’t sleep but I am not fully awake.
I sense, more than I see,
the nurses,
moving about the room not unlike waitresses inside a coffee shop.

I am aware of other people in the other beds,
quietly going through the same mechanical vampirization I am going through.
We are all isolated from each other by the procedure itself.

It is the same procedure, and yet it is completely private, personal.
Well, I am experiencing something very real,
for dialysis is nothing if not reality.

It is a wholly physical thing, a mechanical process.
Yet my conscience is strangely detached,
as if floating in a realm somewhere between matter and spirit.

It is lucidly aware of the weirdness my body is going through
in order to rid itself of noxious toxins
which the kidneys themselves are unable to eliminate.
At the same time, because I have high blood pressure
compounded with white coat syndrome,
I feel the rise of my blood within my veins,
rising powerfully against me,
against the walls if my organs,
against my brain.
I cannot stop the violence of the blood. It grows as the fear grows.

So that the blood pressure is actually the fear itself, and vice versa.
It is the only way I can explain it.
When the nurse takes a reading of my blood pressure,
I am literally ready to star howling, because I can feel how high it is,
and how it is high because of panic.
She looks alarmed when she seen the numbers.
I don’t understand why she looks alarmed. She really shouldn’t.
If I am in the hospital at all, with end stage renal failure,
it is precisely because of my freakish blood pressure.
What the fuck is she doing being surprised, then?
And why do they take my blood pressure
when I am obviously in a state of near panic?
Do they expect to get an accurate reading that way?

Sometimes I fear the lack of imagination,
the absence of instinct these scientifically trained people show.
They only follow the method.
But the method can only reveal what it was designed to reveal in the first place.

So it’s a catch 22.
I want to scream at them: "put me to sleep!!!!
Then you can find out what my real blood pressure is,
when I am not in the grip of fear!!!!"
but they do what they where trained to do.

And they don’t believe I may have a point.
Rather, they assume I am in denial.
By the time dialysis is over my blood pressure is so high I have a headache.

I know it will go down as soon as I step out of the hospital. It always does.
They cleanse and cover the catheter in my neck.
They let me go.

I could ask for an ambulance to drive me home but I choose to walk.
Even though I feel so dizzy I might be drunk,
I really want to walk down the street like a normal person, and breathe the air.
I walk like a zombie, though,
and I keep singing that tune to my self, " hey, hey...beautiful day"
How long can I put up with dialysis?
We shall see.

I kind of fantasize about quitting treatment,
taking a bus bound for some sunny place in the south,
And hang around some beach smoking and drinking whiskey, waiting for the end.
It’s only a fantasy.

Í know I’m not going to do it.
But thinking about it sure makes me feel that I have options.

reformatted from the original source Poetry on Dialysis

"Dialysis" by Floyd Skloot

From The New Criterion Vol. 18, No. 4, December 1999
©1999 The New Criterion

Dialysis

In my brother’s blind and dying
eyes I was forever young.
He rocked and slept to the sound
of my voice as long as memory
played its tune. Then he woke
to speak of vast silver platters
heaped with meat and bouquets
of cheese, hot loaves the way
we found them on the island.
He said my breath had carried
the dream along. We were back
to back again in the Valiant’s
front seat, doors gaping and feet
on the seething summer streets
of Flatbush. As his eyes closed
and sullied blood spun in loops
of plastic tubing, I watched
my brother closing down his life.
Time fell apart in his mind,
leaving nowhere but the past
for him to live. His will to sit
through this ritual cleansing
weakened as each day blended
until only sleep remained.

—Floyd Skloot

Dialysis poem

Derrick J Kess has a poem from the sharp end of the needle up at poetry.com:

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