Wednesday, June 20, 2012

One week post-onset of dialysis

You wouldn't believe how skinny Glenn is now. He lost at least 25 lbs. of water in a week from dialysis,  which is really too much too fast. It has really taken a lot of energy out of him. And with his abdomen being full all the time he hasn't been able to eat as much as he used to. I wish I knew how to post pictures on here so you could see. His arms and legs are like skin and bone. His abdomen is only big because he has 2 liters of extra fluid in it all the time. We were very grateful that the nephrologist told him he could cut down to infusing 2 liters instead of 2.5. That last 500cc was extremely uncomfortable and caused him pains. He is feeling better after each exchange (of fluids) now.
We had 2 of the 3 kids here for Father's Day, and one of them, our daughter, fixed a wonderful dinner for all four of us. And our other son called to wish him a happy Father's Day. He had a nice day with them.
Today we went to G'ville for his usual visit. Long story short, the Dr. decided to wait for 6 more weeks to start Glenn on chemo again. (I think we would have gone back sooner but the Dr. is going to his home country of Israel for a month). He felt like Glenn's numbers are pretty good and he will check the "markers" when we go back to see if anything has changed. The markers are the lab values used to assess the status of his disease. His blood counts were good today, but his chemistry, specifically his potassium, was very low so he got some by IV. His blood pressure has dropped quite a bit and he can hold off on his blood pressure meds for a while and we will monitor it until we go back to the nephrologist in a couple weeks. Hopefully we will just be in a holding pattern for the next few weeks while he gets the dialysis under control. And hopefully he will be on the all night dialysis by the time we go back to G'ville. He had to do a fluid exchange while  we were there today, which is the process of his dialysis. He has to do it 4 times a day and we were there quite a while so we had brought along his supplies to do an exchange. Worked out well because they gave him a room with a bed so he could lay down for a while, since he was feeling really drained, (no pun intended!)
So that's where we are on this Wednesday, the 20th of June. Hopefully the next entries here will be very  boring and unevent-filled.

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