Post a Comment On: Transplant Athlete

Ok. Here's an update.
My brother-in-law's father died a couple of weeks ago. Davita gave me crap about moving my dialysis so I could go to the Saturday funeral in New Jersey, so I ended up dialyzing on a Friday and then on Monday. While my sister and I don't have the best relationship, I do like her husband and his father was a nice guy, so I was willing to do what it takes to get to New Jersey. The next weekend found us driving back up to NJ. My parents and I took RJ and Q (and their cousin Jake) to a St. Patty's Parade in Seaside Heights then we went on the Boardwalk for a while. We had a family party on Sunday for Doreen (cousin Anthony's GF). This week, I switched back to my normal dialysis schedule and ran in to problems. I was going from dialysis on Friday morning to dialysis on Tuesday evening. I knew I had put on too much fluid up in New Jersey, so I tried to get to dialysis as quickly as possible on Tuesday. My blood pressure was so high, I didn't want to take it (plausible deniability)...Dialysis went as expected. We took off a lot of fluid and my blood pressure dropped down to normal with about an hour to go. I started feeling the effects of low blood pressure, so I asked them to add some saline back in. Then all hell broke loose inside me. I felt like I couldn't lift my head up, or open my eyes, and my blood pressure shot up. At the end of dialysis, they removed me from the machine and taped me up, and asked if I wanted them to call an ambulance. It took me an hour to stand up. They kept asking me if I wanted to call my wife to have her pick me up. I eventually got in the car and went home, where I took my blood pressure medicine and increased my blood pressure patch. I was nauseous. I tried watching tv, but I kept falling asleep. Around 1am I checked my blood pressure and it was 250/140, so I told my wife I was driving myself to the hospital. She wanted to call someone, but...Here's my thinking: If I can drive to the hospital, I should (there's no reason to drag my kids out of bed or drag a friend out of bed to drive me or watch my kids unless it's an emergency and if it's an emergency see #2). If I can't drive to the hospital, then it's an emergency and she should just call the ambulance. So, I just got out of the hospital...The Doctors spent Wednesday getting my blood pressure back to normal. The normal medicines weren't working, so they had to drag out the good stuff for my IV. I did get some killer pain meds in the ER, I think it was called Dilantin (I felt like the Human Torch), they also gave me an antiemetic to keep me from getting naseous. Mostly, I got sleepy. The good stuff in the IV drip (Sodium nitroprusside) eventually got my blood pressure down and I felt normal, but they wanted to keep me overnight to dialyze me the next morning. I missed my wife and kids, but I sucked it up and spent the night. After dialysis they discharged me. Thanks to my in-laws for coming down to watch my kids while I was in the Hospital.