Acute Kidney Failure

Well, we got to the doctor's office for DH's 7:45 am appointment. The doctor looked at his foot and said that yes, he needed to be hospitalized for surgery to irrigate and debride the foot ulcer. I said that we'd worked really hard to keep him off his feet but because of his other health issues, it was really hard for him not put any pressure on his foot when he transferred from point A to point B. The doctor said that he could go ahead and be admitted today so they could start him on IV antibiotics and get him stablized before the surgery.

We get to the hospital and get into the EAU - Express Admitting Unit - by 9:00 am. I talked to the physician's assistant (PA) about DH's ongoing problems, they drew some blood, they did all the admissions sort of stuff.

The PA came back in shortly and said that DH's potassium level was 8.2 and his creatinin level was 4.5. Normal creatinin max is 1.0 and his normal is about 1.5. The kidney specialist said that on a "good" day, his kidneys are only functioning about 50% but with the creatinin this high, they're functioning at about 10%.

I knew that when they started talking kidneys again, that we were in trouble. When he went into kidney failure October 2006, we had a lot of these same numbers being thrown around. I also knew they would put in a catheter, which DH hates (I guess it's really painful). The doctors started coming and going out of the room and there was nothing "express" about his admission at all.

To give them credit, we weren't just left sitting in there. They did lots of blood work (he got lots of sticks), did a breathing treatment, gave him lots of medications via IV (including the antibiotic, which he had a reaction to and they had to stop it almost immediately), and just did a lot of things on him - and the wound team came and evaluated him also.

He's in the burn ICU partly because that's the only room in ICU they had and partly because the burn unit nurses deal with wounds all the time. Before I left for the evening he'd had x-rays of the foot to make sure there's no infection in the bone and tomorrow I think he's having some more tests.

I'll go back there after work tomorrow and then he'll have his surgery on Wednesday morning at 7:30 am.