Well I woke up this morning to my peritoneal dialysis machine ( P.D. machine ) beeping at me that the power was out . Kind of cool that it wakes me up before completely turning off. There is no danger to the cycle stopping and the machine turning off. I do need to retrieve information once the power returns. Knowing what time the power goes out is very important though because I need to figure out where I am in the eight-hour cycle. This morning I was at the last drain and fill. So I will only have to do one Twin bag exchange today. This is simply done with an I.V. pole. Good old gravity. When I was first trained for P.D., I was taught this ” old school ” way so that in a power outage or natural disaster, I would still have some control. The twin bags are not too pleasant going in cold so you need to warm the solution. Of course the power is out this morning, so I put my solutions in bed with me to warm them up. After about a half hour, I got a little board and lonely to say the least so I put them on top of our hot water tank in our laundry room. Then they where good to go. There are warmers that a man has designed himself while he was doing P.D, waiting for a transplant. I think I will order one. During the summer Mike and I took the family over to Hornby Island and I was still doing my exchanges, old school. We would all take the time needed for doing this on route. One of the exchanges was while waiting for the ferry. While parked in the line up. Maggie (my sister-in-law) and I walked over to the rocks on the beach and heated the bags this way it worked pretty good. We left the others in the back window while sight-seeing the Island. It was July and very hot so the bags were perfect for each exchange . When doing P.D. old school you need to do one every four hours . For me anyways. We were all amazed how quickly four hours would rush by. We almost missed every exchange! The world revolved around me and my exchanges by the end of that trip. What a fantastic day though. Great memories! The Machine is the way to go. At night and only eight hours, nothing compared to four times a day. They would take any where from twenty minutes to an hour, depending on my drains. Some drains could be slow because of complications. It reminded me of when I had my daughter actually. The feedings and such that you must do for the new baby. Very comparable actually. Everyone taking time out of what ever was happening at that moment in time so mommy could to attend to the little one, (or in my latter case two little twin bags). So enough reminiscing back to my present day. I’m done my twin bags exchange. Now I am free for the rest of the day. Have a great day!