We vampires are like employees who have life-long non-compete clauses. Or possibly more descriptively, well-treated slaves. The V-Wan project started as a virtual meetup: just a Meetup listing containing Zoom-based get togethers. The meetup was titled Hemodiealysis, where the misspelling was intentional. But otherwise, the details sounded normal. It was for patients in hemodialysis to discuss their physical and emotional problems and needs. [[TODO]]
FIVE HUNDRED The thought came to me during one of my sessions. I watched the pump of the dialysis machine spinning as it pushed my blood through the tubes, into the membrane, and then back to my body. Spin spin. Pump pump. Flow flow. The machine would do this for four hours and an amount of blood equivalent to two-times the amount of water in the patient’s body would be processed. The blood picks up new ‘dirty’ water from the body each time it cycles through. At least that is the theory around hemodialysis. But that is not what is really happening. My blood (cleansed of undesirables) is put through a switchable manifold into the proper line to go to one of the twelve different patients I am supporting. Essentially, this is just a fancy way to do a two-way blood transfusion between me and that patient. Why do we need the middle men and machines? The next piece of the puzzle was to understand that pump: how do you buy or make a ‘roller pump’ (formally a ‘peristaltic pump’) since that pump seems to be necessary for the transfusion? A quick google search and some conversations with a college friend made it clear this was not an issue: I could easily get a ‘patient pump’ capable of the 500mL/minute maximum flow rate. To support a vampires flow rate - 44 -
