More Creative Bag Warming for CAPD Patients

By Terry Humenik

I helped my husband keep his dialysate bags warm when we were traveling to a football game last fall and the weather was rather cold. I know you can buy bag warmers, but they’re quite costly, and we don’t need something like that often enough to make it worthwhile.

Here’s what I did. I put two bricks in the oven for an hour at 250 degrees. Then I wrapped the bricks in aluminum foil and placed them in the center of a beach towel. On top of the foil-wrapped heated bricks, I placed two warm dialysate bags and then closed the beach towel around the whole package and placed it all in a styrofoam container that just fit the package. Having no extra airspace also helped to conserve the heat in the container. We took off for the game and found that up to 6 hours later the last bag was still comfortably warm.

I really want to help my husband live well on dialysis and do as much as he can. While he recently had to switch to hemodialysis, I hope this little tip saves someone else some expense or the experience of having to use cold dialysate while trying to travel and enjoy life.

Permission received to post the following information:

Name: Terry Humenik
Cause of spouse’s renal failure: Hypertension and Type II Diabetes Mellitus
Time on dialysis: 1 year
Treatments used: CAPD, then in-center hemodialysis
Work/other activities: Retired—enjoys fishing, computer surfing and games, and being grandpa to four wonderful grandkids!
Date: November 1999