February 18 2020 - Post-surgery Day One, Take Two

This is reposted from my Facebook page.

Note: shortly after I posted this, Doug entered a cycle that lasted nearly three hours while we waited for dialysis to begin: his blood pressure spiked to 230/197, then immediately dropped to 60/34. His pulse started racing into the upper 190s, and he went into aFib. His nurse - who is a hero - spent that entire time pushing med after med just to keep him alive long enough to begin dialysis.

Y'all, we need you to kick the good vibes/prayers into high gear.

Things aren't great. They're having a very hard time keeping his blood pressure up. The medications used to do that are vasoconstrictors, so that's causing diminished blood flow to his extremities. But if they try lowering the dosage on any of them (or when a bag gets empty), his BP drops precipitously in just a few seconds (about twenty minutes ago, from 135/65 to 74/41 in about half a minute).

Also, Doug's kidneys are not functioning. At all. The doctors have tried giving him meds to kick-start them, but that was unsuccessful. Without renal function, there's nothing cleaning his blood, which is sending his labs in a bad direction. If we don't get that under control, it could cause cardiac issues.

Interventional Radiology will be here soon (ish) to take him for a catheter insertion so they can start dialysis. That adds even more complexity and risk to a fluid management balancing act that's already pretty tricky.

Long story short: it took me way too long to find this man, and I NEED him to get better so he can come home to me. So please - prayers, voodoo dolls, animal sacrifice, whatever your spiritual thing is, PLEASE do some of that.