The January 2010 transplant continues as three people I have 'met' since beginning to blog on PKD are receiving living donor transplants this month.
Sean Hoefling (Living with PKD) had his transplant early in January and is doing great and already going back to work. He's had some issues with Potassium levels but that seems to be working out. Diet is way less restrictive than with dialysis, but it is still very important. The thinking is, if it is difficult for the kidney to process or maintain proper levels, then help the kidney out by watching what you eat.
His brother Bruce (pkd sucks) is not having such an easy go. There were unusual complications with blood flow to the kidney which required a second surgery, a longer stay in ICU and now 'sleepy kidney syndrome'. He is producing urine, but they are waiting for the creatinine to start going down. Bruce just doesn't seem to go down the easiest path! Everything, from PKD to dialysis and now to transplant has been extremely difficult. As difficult as my path seemed, I almost feel guilty about how easy it was compared to what Bruce, Amy and their family has been through.
Neal Branson ("...in sickness and in health...") and Candy (his donor and co-worker) are in surgery this morning. A local news outlet did a great story which you can see here (Deputy's Kidney Fight). The surguries should be starting soon.
These are all miracles of people donating living parts of their flesh, blood and bodies to give another the gift of life. Please keep them all in your prayers.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Dialysis: Learning to Adjust
So it turned out that adjusting to the reality of dialysis was the easiest adjustment to make. The reality of dialysis involves more than just adapting life to a new schedule. It involves a total surrender of lifestyle to the demands of treatment. Weight control, fluid intake restrictions, diet restrictions are just a few of the new issues that dominate life with dialysis. The driving goal in life becomes getting good lab results.
The most important issue is managing weight gain between treatments. A treatment removes a minimum of 1.8 kilograms of fluid waste and a maximum of 6.0 kilograms. The waste includes excess water that is normally removed by the kidneys along with various waste materials produced in the body. Each patient is assigned at 'dry' weight and the goal of each treatment is to remove the necessary amount of fluid to reach that weight.
So the first thing a patient does when called to the treatment area is step on a scale and relay the weight to the patient care technician who then subtracts the 'dry' weight from the actual weight. The difference is the amount of fluid to be removed.
In my case, I'm a big guy. My dry weight when I started dialysis was 115 kg. If I weighed 120 kg. when I arrived, the treatment would have to remove 5 kg. That's 11 pounds for you non-metric folks! AND that's a LOT of fluid to pull out of a body! The results of taking off that much fluid are headaches, nausea, cramping and loss of blood pressure, any one of which can cause the machine to be set on minimum, which means that the job of blood cleaning is not getting done.
Thus the most important goal between treatments is weight control. The easiest way to put on weight if your kidneys aren't working is to consume fluid, so fluid intake should be restricted to one quart per day, 32 ounces, 4 - 8 oz glasses of water. I repeat, restricted to one quart combined of any liquid: water, tea, coffee, gravy, soup, ice cream, hot sauce, popsicles, not to mention beer, which has so many other things that cause problems with dialysis that it's totally out of the question. Well, out of the question if effective dialysis treatments that don't cause illness are the goal.
Unfortunately, the amount of food consumed impacts weight gain as well. (Is that really true??? DAMN!!!) That leads to the question of which foods contribute to more successful treatments and which ones don't. Now the path leads to chemistry of nutrition and things really get complicated.
And that's a story for another night.
The most important issue is managing weight gain between treatments. A treatment removes a minimum of 1.8 kilograms of fluid waste and a maximum of 6.0 kilograms. The waste includes excess water that is normally removed by the kidneys along with various waste materials produced in the body. Each patient is assigned at 'dry' weight and the goal of each treatment is to remove the necessary amount of fluid to reach that weight.
So the first thing a patient does when called to the treatment area is step on a scale and relay the weight to the patient care technician who then subtracts the 'dry' weight from the actual weight. The difference is the amount of fluid to be removed.
In my case, I'm a big guy. My dry weight when I started dialysis was 115 kg. If I weighed 120 kg. when I arrived, the treatment would have to remove 5 kg. That's 11 pounds for you non-metric folks! AND that's a LOT of fluid to pull out of a body! The results of taking off that much fluid are headaches, nausea, cramping and loss of blood pressure, any one of which can cause the machine to be set on minimum, which means that the job of blood cleaning is not getting done.
Thus the most important goal between treatments is weight control. The easiest way to put on weight if your kidneys aren't working is to consume fluid, so fluid intake should be restricted to one quart per day, 32 ounces, 4 - 8 oz glasses of water. I repeat, restricted to one quart combined of any liquid: water, tea, coffee, gravy, soup, ice cream, hot sauce, popsicles, not to mention beer, which has so many other things that cause problems with dialysis that it's totally out of the question. Well, out of the question if effective dialysis treatments that don't cause illness are the goal.
Unfortunately, the amount of food consumed impacts weight gain as well. (Is that really true??? DAMN!!!) That leads to the question of which foods contribute to more successful treatments and which ones don't. Now the path leads to chemistry of nutrition and things really get complicated.
And that's a story for another night.
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