For the last couple of days I have been having some pain in the venous site of my AV Fistula. I changed the location of the cannulation. I am actually at Care Hospital, waiting outside Dr. P. C. Gupta's OP room for my turn. Dr. P. C. Gupta is a vascular surgeon.

I suspect that there is an infection at that site. There was a similar pain a couple of months back and I had shown it to him. He put me on an antibiotic and asked me to give the site some rest. I haven't used that site since then. Now, a site close to that is paining.

I am a little worried about this. This is the second time in the recent past that this has happened.

A fistula is basically an access to your body's blood for dialysis. During dialysis, blood is continuously drawn from an artery and then passed through an artificial kidney - a dialyser - and then sent back into the body through a vein. Veins are generally small and cannot handle the flows typical during the dialysis process. For this reason, the artery and the vein are connected so that over time, the vein becomes large enough to be able to handle these flows.

Over the last thirteen years, I have had a number of surgeries that involved making accesses, most of them fistulae, in my arms. Once a site has been used or attempted to be used, it cannot be used later. So, except for my right upper arm, all potential fistula sites have been used up. The current fistula is in my left upper arm.

For this reason, I must do all it takes to preserve the current fistula because I do not have too many options left in terms of access.

... http://www.kamaldshah.com/2010/11/fistula-pain.html