Sunday, May 24th Tears and Fears

As I write this the tears are rolling down my face.  I spoke to my mom earlier today about a doctor's visit.  While our conversation was not at all emotional, the impact of what we talked about has sunk in now that I am alone and quiet.  A young nephrologist (kidney doc) had asked if a nephrectomy (removal of the kidneys).  When Clayton went into cardiac arrest, he was only days away from having the pre-op appointment for the nephrectomy.  Right now, Clayton is not strong enough for the surgery.  He has been in a plateau in his recovery.  This has been emotionally difficult for all of us.  Mom talked about how it is difficult to manage his fluids and will continue to be until he gets a transplant, again.  Before he gets a transplant, he needs to have the nephrectomy and he needs to get much stronger to do that.  Ironically, the kidney transplant would help him to heal and get stronger.  

Some background information: When a patient has a kidney transplant, the original kidneys are not removed.  Instead, the kidney is placed in the front of the body and the old kidneys are left in their locations.  For most patients, it is too traumatic to remove the kidneys and have the transplant.  The old kidneys usually are not harmful.  This is not the case for Clayton.  His kidneys had radiation as a an infant and are considered neurologically compromised.  As was his bladder.  In hindsight, for most of the doctors, a nephrectomy probably should have been done prior to Greg donating his kidney to Clayton.  His kidneys have been sending out random, mixed up signals since they had received nerve damage during the radiation.  The kidney that Greg donated (fondly called "Righty") was damaged when he had an episode of flash pulmonary edema in October of '08.  It continued to make urine but Clayton needed to start dialysis because Righty could no longer make high quality urine.