Okay, Story time with the Legospaceman: (either you’ll find it interesting, or at least it will let me blow off some steam)
The doctor who put a graft into my arm (who can’t seem to remember if it was a fistula or a graft) was told months ago that I had lost all feeling to the index finger of that arm. He indicated that was normal and that the no feeling and numbness would go away. A month after that my finger started to feel pain.. He looked at the finger and said “It’s healing”. The next few months were series of the nurses at the dialysis center constantly indicating that they didn’t think it was getting better. Calls to the doctor were impossible to make because no one answered. Finally, I walked into the clinic and said I needed to see the doctor (of which I had been informed that this breached some kind of unwritten protocol). Saw the doctor. He looked at the finger and said “I really think it’s healing.” Fast forward another month and the head nurses decided they were going to contact the nephrologist and inform him that in their opinion something needs to be done. Get an appointment and he arranges a new surgery to repath the graft (or fistula). A few weeks after, he sees me again and says “it’s definitely getting better.”
Anyway, about seven months of this have taken place, and I’ve been in pain the whole time. Advance a few more months into this timeline and I see him once more because “no, it’s not getting better.” He sends me to a plastic surgeon with the idea of cleaning out the debris that has accumulated as this finger was “getting better”. The plastic surgeon says he doesn’t want to clean it out until we’ve had an xray to make sure it’s not infected (which means he’ll have to amputate part of the finger). I go and get an xray and it turns out that the finger is NOT infected. I go back to the plastic surgeon and he says the only option is to amputate.
This is kind of where I am now. My nephrologist has honored my request of getting a second opinion, so now we’re in a holding pattern waiting for some mysterious doctor to entertain me with a second opinion. Meanwhile, my finger has made it so I haven’t had more than two hours of sleep most nights during this period.