From this morning, sorry it didn't post. Lots of Internet problems at these hospitals...
Yesterday was possibly the craziest day we have had. Even more crazy then his horrible reaction to the 3f8 in May. Clayton was having acute renal failure due to an obstruction and the effects of his renal failure came on so suddenly and so aggressively that it was creating dangerous levels of various chemicals in his body that were causing additional problems. There are two theories as to what happened. First, the stent has a curly-q at each end and when removed, it could have scratched the lining of his ureter resulting in swelling. The second theory is that after removing the stent, a little bleeding (which a little is normal) then formed a blood clot which got stuck at the top of his ureter causing a blockage. Time is the solution to either theory. Swelling will go down in time or the substances in urine will break down the blood clot in time. The important thing is that we were able to address all of the side effects of this blockage yesterday to counteract some of the alarming levels of chemicals the kidney failure was causing in his body to avoid further damage elsewhere. As for the kidney damage itself, Children's Medical Center in Dallas has a reputation for being excellent at "reversing" things, so we are hopeful they will be able to reverse the kidney failure in a way that will cause minimal long term effects. Already overnight, his levels are recovering well and he is improving since getting the nephrostomy tube. For those that are familiar with creatinine, his levels are normally 0.6 or 0.7; Yesterday morning they were 2.2 and by yesterday evening they were 3. The doctors suspect they were even higher than 3 before he got his nephrostomy tube. Yesterday was a long day and there are lots of details and balancing acts that I'm not sure I'm up to rehashing, but this is where things stand this morning.
We are hoping to extubate him today and I think we will definitely be back at TSRHC by Friday. Possibly tomorrow afternoon. Since we would be in a hospital setting still we will be able to monitor his labs to make sure they continue to trend in the right direction and the urologist would come see us regularly. IF something went wrong again, we could easily come right back, but since we are just going to another hospital, we should be able to get over there pretty quickly. Which is nice since TSRHC is kinda home.
We could't get a room at the Ronald last night, so I went and stayed at our room at TSRHC (because they are holding our room with all of our things until we get back) and George stayed in the ICU with Clayton. When I got back everybody was asking how Clayton was and all the kids came rolling outside of our room door to hear how he was. I just wanted to scoop up all kids in their wheel chairs and hug them. So sweet how everybody is family there. Two of the other mom's there had been plotting on leaving heir husbands with the kids to come be with me until George could get here. Love it.
It has been crazy and I have never seen Clayton react that way to anything; which was the scariest thing to see how he got so serious so fast. Seeing how his body was reacting to this was crazy crazy crazy! He was just not himself at all, but he did not get to the point he was unresponsive thankfully. I'm still shocked at how one kidney obstruction could cause his body to start shutting down so quickly. Definitely in awe of the power of the kidney...not that I didn't have great respect for it before. We have always worked hard to protect it. The urologist last night did confirm my suspicions about Clayton's behavior the other night, which is that the obstruction would have caused him to feel much like the way a kidney stone can make a person feel. So that is why he was tossing and turning and vomiting and so uncomfortable all night Monday and by the morning it had progressed so rapidly his body was being poisoned by high levels of potassium and reacting strongly to all of the fluid that had no where to go. By last night, I was at peace though with where things were and able to leave Clayton and George and get myself some good rest. I was happy we had the tube in and confident that the team here had things on the right track. Things have been improving and I'm still hopeful they'll keep getting better.
Never a dull moment...
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