Fair warning, at first glance this post may appear pissy, but I’ll assure the reader right now that this is far from the case.
As of last Friday (when I was down in dialysis) was to come to the hospital dialysis probably three times a week. The only big thing keeping me here (instead of home) would be to get a spot in an outpatient clinic, where I would continue this schedule until my kidneys woke up or other solutions found. Everybody told me that this would last at least a couple months.
On Sunday night I started to pee. I kept peeing. It’s been normal. Swelling around my body is coming down by itself.
I haven’t stopped peeing and I haven’t had to go to dialysis. We are taking it day by day. My labs, while far from perfect, have been stable since the weekend.
Since the filters are trying to work, this means that I am again going into wrap up mode and we are getting things ready for me to get out of here; making sure that none of my medical needs stop when I walk out the door. (Of course the closest eye is being kept on the kidneys.)
I really need to get out of here. 4 1/2 years ago when I woke up at Inova with tubes everywhere I took it because everybody goes through stuff and I figured I’d have to at some point in my life.
A month ago I woke up here with tubes everywhere and I had done it again because I knew I had to do it again.
Two weeks ago was just some bullshit, waking up with a bunch of tubes and lines and it was because I couldn’t be woken up and I was in danger of killing my new lungs — all because these kidneys decided to stop working. I had tubes and lines in the same places where tubes and lines had just been removed!
It’s going to take a really long time to get over waking up in that ICU with a machine breathing for me and having no idea how I got there. I couldn’t have gotten through that night if Jennifer had not stayed over — she was told them were lowering my sedation so I could be waking up at any time. I feel awful for what she went through that week not knowing if I’d make it. That entire time I was blissfully sedated, not knowing at all what was going on or how bad things had gotten so quickly.
After reading what I just wrote it’s even more apparent how badly I need a brain recharge, a day off where I see nobody but my wife, puppy and cat. I’m leaving it as is.