Hanging In there

I don't have a lot of new news. The doctors are still doing tests to get to the bottom of the acute kidney failure. Now, I know that I did not use that word yesterday but I really, really didn't want to freak people out before I have an understanding of what that means.

We spoke more to the kidney specialist today and because it is acute that is actually a good sign. There is more chance that his kidneys will recover and return to how they were functioning before all of this. John's condition is stable at this time and if it does worsen they will take him to dialysis asap. They are not doing a lot of I.V. and diuretics because they don't want to push his kidneys but be very gentle with them. They are still hoping that the dialysis will not be necessary.

We were a bit concerned today because the kidney specialist was concerned about finding proteins in his urine, the kind of protein that his myeloma spills, the kind of proteins that did all the damage in the first place. These proteins are called something, something light chains. When I refer to them in the future I will just call them light chains. Just the mention of this had papa bear running way ahead of things and he was thinking that his cancer had decided to get real bad, all in just one short week. He was tested thoroughly during the last two weeks and while there is some activity, there is no way on the planet that it is gone to that type of an extreme in a week. I was having a hard time convincing him of that so I asked for the resident transplant oncologist to come and explain the cancer side of things because the kidney guy really only sees the kidney side of things. She assured John that his cancer has not progressed in a week but did say that probably everything combined stressed his kidneys out.

1.Light chains
2.full body irradiation (killing off cells that have to be filtered out of the kidneys)
3. The transplant with incompatible blood type (more dead cells that the kidneys have to filter)
4.Tracolimus (the anti rejection drug that they had to give him lots of to get the level fairly high in his system so that he won't reject the transplant.

The diarrhea was caused from the junk they gave him to lower his potassium levels and really did not do the job seeing as how he kept puking it up. Tonight they are going to get it lowered by giving him insulin. First they will give him lactose to raise his blood sugars.

He had to have blood transfusion today because his hemoglobin was low. This is nothing new and not and unusual thing.

Any way, to sum it all up, his spirits are doing a bit better after all the explaining. We really would like prayer for his kidneys and especially that the trocolimus and his kidneys could some how make friends. He will have to be on this drug for a considerable amount of time and possibly forever although at much lower levels. Pray that he will start peeing. I know that you all have prayed for a lot of different things in your day and I am sure that this is a first but let me tell you, when the man starts peeing, I am going to celebrate! Susan, could you phone pastor Kevin and maybe a few more members of our church family. Just knowing that they are on this would make me feel better.

You can phone John. I know that mom would love to talk to him and that she is worried. Susan, could you pass his phone number on to her. I will leave it on your facebook private message board.

Thank you all for all your virtual hugs and well wishes and prayers. Stuff like that really helps keep me going and reminds me that most people are good. It must be that the cranky ones take jobs as taxi cab dispatchers.

Oh and thanks Becky for editing that post. I am sure that I could not have possibly have got it all correct!