Well for 5 months following Tims hospital stay we have gone to countless doctors appointments and three months of chemo therapy to see if the biopsy was wrong.. If it was the Chemo would have helped start healing the kidneys. We determined about a week ago that it did not help Tim with gaining kidney function back and therefore we stopped Chemo Treatment. It did help kill the Lupus and put it into a remission state so that it would not affect any other part of the body.. there is a chance it can come back but with the other immunosuppressant drugs that have him on its very unlikley that it will hit him as hard as it did where it killed his kidneys. So goodbye Kidneys. Our Nephrologist advised us of signs and symptoms on the 22nd of December to look for that will show us when it was ready for Tim to start Dialysis. The signs and symptoms were along the lines of.. if you feel like crap come in and we will test your numbers.. if your numbers are high its time.. This scared me because Tim didn't have any signs or symptoms with any of this except for a headache.. and that didn't instictively tell me.. hey check his kidney function. Anyways it was not 24 hours after we left the kidney doctor that Tim started feeling crummy. He couldnt hold down food or liquids. He wasn't feeling fatigued but just throwing up. I called the oncall on Monday the 26th and they told me that it was most likely a bug... Yesterday the 30th I called them again because he still wasn't holding down his fluids.. I feared that he was dehydrated. We received a call back to go into the Emergency room right away to pump him up with fluids and check his numbers. Sure enough his Creatinine level and protein level was twice as high as what it was last week. The emergency room wanted to admit him last night and set up a time to put his dialysis port in (which will be placed through his stomach.. and will help filter toxins everyday) but our doctor said that he wouldn't get anything done until at least tuesday and gave Tim the option to go home and stay hydrated which is what we did.
I am putting a video on here so you can see what Peritineal Dialysis is.. It is not the dialysis where you have to go to the center 5 hours/3times a week and get the blood filtered through your body.. This one is done at home while Tim is sleeping. They place a port through his stomach and everynight he hooks up to a little machine with 2 bags of fluid and an empty bag and for 8 hours, the clean fluid comes in and the dirty fluid is pushed out. This video will explain that to you incase you are insterested or have kidney disease/family members have kidney disease and you are worried or scared. This allows Tim to function normally and go throughout his day without having to worry about going to a center.. he is able to work and do everything normal.. The cord will not get pulled out of his skin and as long as he is clean there wont be any issues with infection. He has his own nurse on call 24 hours a day and they will come over.. and once a month he has the option to see a doctor at the dialysis center to check his numbers.
We were trying to delay this from happening so that he could have a transplant without going on dialysis but things arent looking that way. Which is fine, the success of transplants is not much different from people that are on Dialysis first and those that can manage to squeeze the Kidney in before starting Dialysis.. and this is temporary until he has the Transplant.. once he has the transplant the tube comes out and his Kidney cane function without a machine. If the kidney fails then he will have this as a back up option and we will go on the Donor list again.
I want to thank everyone again for their kind words and thoughts through all of this. This truly has been a tough year for Tim and his family and myself.. but hopefully with this Dialysis Treatment Tim will feel better and not be dehydrated and sick anymore and be able to go back to work and be healthy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LriX7okbAqU
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