WebKittyn Warbles

A few people have asked me so I thought I'd do the smart thing and write it out here. This is what went down with me, how it happened and what went wrong. It's long and I don't expect more than 3 people to read it to the end but that's cool. I don't write it out to sound preachy either. Everyone is going to do what they want with their life and just because I almost died doesn't mean I need to have that sort of attitude. I just want to write it out so when people ask me where all the scars came from, I can point them here.

November 27 my dad went to the hospital. He couldn't breathe even with the oxygen so my mother called the ambulance and off he went. He was given a tracheostomy, put on a ventilator and pretty much written off. Unbeknownst to me, the stress of this made my blood pressure go through the roof. The blood pressure started to kill my kidneys but like I said, I had no clue I even had high blood pressure.

In December I started getting very weak. Walking from one room to the other was getting tougher and tougher and I felt horrible 24/7. I thought it was just worry for my dad and the flu. I was taking a shitload of over the counter remedies, the ibuprofen also went to work on my kidneys with the high blood pressure. I still had no idea I had high blood pressure or any issues with my kidneys.

My dad seemed to be getting worse. He was moved to another hospital and they were very grim in their predictions.

When it seemed I had had the flu for a month, I went to the ER at Kingston Hospital. They thought I had TB and stuck me in an isolated room. They didn't entirely believe I was sick, they thought it was in my head and caused by stress over my father. They kept me doped up 24/7 on Ativan. My doctor never bothered to come see me, just prescribed more Ativan.

They ran tests and decided there were nodes on my lung they wanted to inspect so they scheduled me for two lung biopsies, one under my breast and one in my throat. There was much stress in Kingston Hospital as they made no bones about letting me know they didn't believe I was really sick.

Meanwhile my dad was upstairs with constant diarrhea and the doctor out and out told my mother he would never eat on his own again as a feeding tube was inserted into his stomach.

They decided I was a diabetic even though the Prednesone they had me overdosing on is known to raise sugar.

I spent 16 days there and went home feeling just as crappy as when I went in. They sent me home with prescriptions for everything from high cholesterol (which I have never had) to diabetes to Ativan. I went home and had nightmares from the morphine still in my system. I was still unable to walk or get up and got stuck in the bathtub for 2 hours as I could not pull myself up. The doctor there looked me in the eyes and told me 'Your kidneys are fine."

This was Superbowl Sunday.

Other things started to fail, I didn't go to the bathroom for over 30 days and I was in constant agony. No one really believed I was as bad off as I said I felt. I was getting 3 insulin shots a day for diabetes on top of the meds. I had myself convinced it was all in my head, brought on by my inability to deal with my dad. I had a scar on my throat that bled like something out of Hellraiser.

I was too weak to get up and go see my dad who was having a real hard time going back and forth between the rehab center and the hospital. Every time he got to the center and got settled something went terribly wrong and he was rushed back to the ICU.

February 17th I finally gave in and went back to the ER via ambulance. I hadn't shat in 35 days and the pain was finally too much. I thought it was because of all the pills they had me on. I had to be 'manually decompacted' by a woman who looked like Grace Jones and had all the compassion of a wildebeest. It was the worst pain I have EVER endured and I even blacked out for a few seconds. Still unknown to me, this traumatic event sent my blood pressure through the roof.

I couldn't hardly move after this but I was convinced it was all in my head.

The first week in March I was feeling really bad. I was throwing up everything I put in me, even water. My dad was also in a really bad way, he had a few serious close calls and I attributed my decline to that.

March 8th I walked into the living room, sat on my mother's lap in her recliner, called her 'mommy' (which I have never called her) and went into a seizure. She called the ambulance, I had another seizure on the way to the hospital and I was in and out of consciousness. At the hospital my blood pressure was 300/290 and I had two more seizures. They put a foley bag in me and put me in ICU, same room and bed my dad had been in. I have no memory of the 2 1/2 days I spent there.

Luckily for me, the doctor at the ER (this was Northern Dutchess Hospital, NOT Kingston again) was on the ball. He made the call that it was full-out kidney failure and he had me sent to Albany Medical Center.

I spent 3 days in the ICU at Albany. I do not remember any of those days. My mother tells me I woke up a few times and kept insisting I was in Valhalla at Westchester Medical Center. They would ask if I knew where I was and I kept answering WMC.

My memory returns the day they moved me to the hardcore floor of people bad off. I woke up with a catheter sticking out of me and no clue where I was or why I was there.

I spent the next 8 weeks in Albany, going through endless tests and 4 surgeries. It was deemed that I had "Malignant Hypertension" which led to End Stage Renal Disease and the shutting down of my kidneys. The doctors there were fantastic, they ran every test under the sun before they made a diagnosis and they confirmed what I knew from back in December - it was NOT in my head. How they missed the blood pressure and the kidney disease in Kingston blows my mind.

I spent my birthday and Easter in the hospital.

They confirmed that I was NOT a diabetic. All the unnecessary insulin and pills did not help my kidneys. They did not give me Ativan or even suggest that I needed it.

Once the pressure was brought down, it went DOWN. I went to dangerously low levels without medication a few nights and it perplexed even the best of the veterans who said he hadn't seen a case like mine "in 20 years."

They caught a blood infection that was pretty serious. They gave me two transfusions as I was really bad off. They talked to me about the possibility of needing dialysis for the rest of my life and the process of transplant. They kept me in the hospital for eight weeks so they could be totally sure I would be alright when they sent me home.

While I was in Albany my dad surprised everyone and began to get better. Over the course of 8 weeks he passed the swallow test and was taken off the feeding tube. He was breathing on his own with the oxygen in the nose and not needing the ventilator.

I was discharged May 3rd and sent home with 50 stitches, the graft, the catheter in my chest and 4 prescriptions, one of which is a painkiller. I was set up with a dialysis center for 3 1/2 hours 3 times a week.

Next up for me is the removal of the stitches which have become embedded so there will be pain. Once it heals a bit more I will begin getting dialysis through two needles inserted into the graft. Then it's one more surgery to remove the catheter from my jugular vein.

There is a chance I will get off dialysis, my kidneys are not totally dead. We won't know for a few months but it's a possibility not everyone gets.

My dad will be coming home in a month or so, they're making plans to remove the trach he's been so good.

So there it is, start to present. Not resolved, not over, no happy endings yet. If my mother hadn't been home that one day I probably would have died on the den floor and losing a week is scary. I'm here though, I made it through a really rough time. I'm not the person I was in October but I like to think I'm a little better.

Now I struggle daily to get back to the life I knew and mix it with dialysis and kidney failure. Some days I don't do so well but it's still a learning process.

I have no idea what's ahead for me but I know I'm done with hospitals for a long time and the day this catheter comes out I am taking a 3 hour shower.

Some six months, eh?