Daily Visits to Cedars Sinai Hospital

MONDAY night: home. Heaven on earth.

TUESDAY, Jan 15

• Our nephrologist calls early to summons Cam to his office . . . his downtown office. A visit there is akin to a French play of the slamming-in-and-out-of-doors genre.
• Leaving downtown doctor's office, we look like the clowns in a farce with their big leg-kick-circles to show how fast we'll go to get to the dialysis center before it closes (closes?! the dialysis center at the hospital never "closed"!)
• Our L.A. dialysis center has Cam's filter (ie, "kidney") ready on the machine . . . to torture. It was the kind of filter we learned the hard way that he's allergic to. I bark at people and sift through Cam's records until I find the information someone missed (I'll forgive, but let this be a lesson to you, readers -- check everything at every visit to be sure you're getting the care you're supposed to get).
• Cam's blood pumps very slowllllyy f o r one h o u r u n t i l the f i l t e r cl clo c l o g s. No more dialysis today.
• The doctor orders a medicine to be put in Cam's catheter tubes to dissolve any dried blood overnight. Perhaps the catheters clogged because his last dialysis was a long time ago: last Friday. Whatever the reason, the blood was pumping so slowly out of his chest catheter during dialysis, the slow-moving blood eventually created a huge clot in his filter (aka "kidney").

WEDNESDAY, Jan 16

• Chest x-ray.
• Dialysis; 3 hours, full run. Relatively uneventful, except for his insanely itchy legs (phosphorous that doesn't get filtered out can cause itchiness, but it's peculiar that his legs itch more during dialysis), and of course he has his usual raging headache in the last half of treatment that takes 4-6 hours following dialysis to quell.

THURSDAY, Jan 17

• Doctor calls to say there is "significant pleural effusion." Half of one lung is "obliterated" on the x-ray. Normal-person speak: one lung has lots of fluid surrounding and compressing it.
• Back to the hospital for the fluid to be aspirated (drained) via a long needle through Cam's back. In all, a liter of fluid is removed. Cam enjoys very much the improved breathing after the procedure.
• The day begins and ends with more dry heaves. The mystery is back, since we'd had a dry-heave reprieve for three days. I call our surgeon's on-call doctor at Wake-Forest. Still haven't gotten to the bottom of all the dry heaves . . . we're diligent about not letting his stomach get empty, and C-diff shouldn't be the reason. Hmmm . . . 

FRIDAY, Jan 18

• Meet with nephrologist, not down-town, but at Cedars Sinai Hospital. The visit is still somewhat like a French slamming-doors farce. But he's remarkably smart. We'll take it.
• Cam gets blood drawn for lab tests. The doctor will dialyze today or not based on Cam's lab results.
• We eat lunch outside at a sidewalk cafe and wait for the doctor's call. We praise L.A. for her beautiful blue sky.
• Doctor calls to say no dialysis today. Cam is to report for labs to be drawn again tomorrow morning before dialyzing.

EVERY DAY, Infinity

• Krisha is grateful.