Gaming & Caregiving: An Interest of Conflict

I only alluded that I was deep in some medical situation last year without revealing what it was because I was not comfortable to be open about the details then. I didn't know how long it would last, and I didn't want to assume anything in regard to its continuance. But here we are in 2025, and I am still doing it so I may as well be out with it since this is probably going to be a part of me for a long time to come. As you may have guessed from the title, I am currently a full-time caregiver but not just the watching the elderly kind. I am a home dialysis care partner, which means that I manage the home dialysis for a loved one. In case you are not familiar with dialysis, it's that medical procedure for those with renal failure that involves pulling blood out of your body to be cleaned by a machine before the blood goes back into you. It all sounds pretty gnarly, and I guess if you can't handle the sight of blood, it probably is but I am so used to all of it now. I do this five times a week. In our case, each treatment takes 3 hours and 25 minutes to finish but that doesn't include preparation time and whatever galaxy forsaken issues that may pop-up along the way plus inventory management, inventory pickup, and post treatment clean up, et cetera. So yes, it's a fulltime job. If you look back to my gaming livestreams post-February 2024, you may have seen me stopping dead in my tracks having to take care of mid-treatment troubles. I want to make it clear however that I am happy to be a care partner. That is not an issue. The problem is that since home dialysis takes a lot of my time, it is causing a conflict when it comes to enjoying my games, which is something that I am struggling with in an ongoing basis ever since this whole thing began.

This is where the cleaning magic happens.

I still love gaming - in video and tabletop forms - so I am still actively pursuing that happiness. It is definitely a challenge to do so when you have less time to devote to them. Home dialysis is not a plug and play process that the medical facility seemingly portrayed it to be. It is a medical procedure that requires close attention and constant awareness. I can step away from the treatment area, but I am tethered to an app that requires constant monitoring, and I have to make sure that I can drop anything that I am doing immediately during this time to address issues. This means that I cannot play real-time games during a huge chunk of my free time that's being utilized for the treatment. I still manage to be able to livestream during this time because I know that I can leave that at any time even if I had some kind of viewership. But it is hard to get deep into games sometimes when I have to ensure that my loved one is not slipping into an unresponsive state every half hour. Of course, this whole process has been psychologically draining because I want to make sure that every dialysis session is a success. It was doubly hard when Yoshi passed away even though that emotional torment has subsided somewhat. There were several scary, rather traumatic moments that happened during and after the treatment thus far, and these things reminded me of the fragility of the situation.

This app is always in front of me these days.

It's close to a year now since I became a home dialysis care partner. Yes, that's what they call you. That term, "partner", is kind of funny when you are just a full-time dialysis nurse for your loved one. Maybe I am being unfair, because I have seen videos of home dialysis patients who seemingly are more involved in the whole process. But the truth of the matter is, once your loved-one is hooked up to this machine, you are on your own because they won't be able to resolve almost all the issues that may occur. Technical support is always a call away but yes, you are basically doing all of the work. Things have gotten easier as the practice has basically now become just another chore in my daily life. I am getting pretty good at finding time to get my gaming done in between but I have to admit that a significant chunk of my gaming time is now gone. Sacrifices has to be made sometimes for the good of the people you love, but that doesn't mean that things are always easy. I am making the best out of this situation, and I know that the time spent doing real things outside of gaming is always worth it.