From the time I leave the house until I get home it takes about 7 hours. The actual process takes 4 hours. But there's about an hour of setup and another 3/4 hour of wrap up. I tend to bleed and have had about a dozen blowouts so I spend 20 minutes after needle withdrawal to make sure I'm not going to break out in heavy bleeding. It's kind of hell because I once had a viral infection that parallelized the left side of my diaphragm. This means I need an aid to help me breathe when laying on my back. I must lay on my back because they've got two large gauge needles in my left arm and a blood pressure cuff on my right arm. This means I need my CPAP to breathe. Now, because of Covid-19, they are prohibiting CPAPs in the hospital. Now I have to sit upright rather than recline and use oxygen in my nostrils. It's really shitty. I use to try and sleep during the procedure but now I can't because I'm sitting upright. Sometimes my little room gets taken because they have some dialysis patient with some sort of communicable infection and I have to go out on the floor with all the other patients who jabber loud and run their TVs loud which means no sleep for me. I can't see good and although they have TVs for each reclining chair the TVs are small and I can't see them so I'm left with nothing but to tough out the time I'm there which runs close to 6 hours. Also, with no CPAP and even with the oxygen is hard for me to breathe, so there's that to contend with. It's not really a pleasant experience. But oh, when I get home my wife is there to greet the VA minibus or the ambulance, whichever the VA sends, and she's outside in the driveway with a smile on her face and helps me to change clothes and recline on the couch while she fixes me a really nice cup of hot tea with clover honey in it. She makes life worth while.
