Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The weekend of surgeries, delays & disappointments...

Well the emergency surgery that was to take place in October was delayed. It turns out lack of communication resulted in Dwayne not being able to have the pre-surgery scans he needed due to allergies to the contrast die for the scan. Unfortunately our hospital system does not go through the same interview process as the hospitality industry as the secretary that was to rebook things for Dwayne was “too busy to deal with it” when he called after a couple of weeks of waiting for a call. To make a long story short it took Dwayne’s fabulous specialist to get involved and he was finally booked for a surgery on November 10th.

November 4th I took Dwayne into emergency with a very painful arm (his fistula). It was not making any noise, and we could not feel the “thrill” as it’s called. When we got to emergency we were told it was clotted. Dwayne then spent the next 4 days in the hospital. The original surgeon and his secretary had held off too long to rebook the initial appointment which is why Dwayne’s fistula clotted, it just didn’t get the treatment it needed fast enough. While in the hospital his first procedure was delayed and delayed until finally they did a 2.5hr procedure on his arm to try and remove the clot, but it was too late. They then did an emergency “perm cath” which is a tube inserted near his collarbone into his artery. The tubes come out of his chest so that they can hook up dialysis. This was Dwayne’s worst nightmare. Any chance of fixing his arm was lost when the surgeon continuously postponed the surgery all weekend and in the end Dwayne had a graft put into his arm next to his old fistula. This graft is made of a Gore-Tex/Teflon type material and it was placed inside his arm. Dialysis is now done through the graft. Dwayne just had the tubes removed from his neck last Thursday and they are using the graft on a full time basis.

The performance of the graft has become a concern. The dialysis staff will be testing the new fistula to see how it is working. The result so far is that Dwayne’s potassium is very high. This is hard on his body and can potentially cause very serious problems with his muscles and heart. We will see what the results of the testing will bring and hope that Dwayne will be feeling better soon.

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