Gracie Facie

Hi Everybody,

This post will be brief because I have to run off to my last Psych nursing clinical….finally.   Anyway, Grace had her peritoneal dialysis catheter placed yesterday and is feeling ok at home.  It’s difficult to convince her that meds will help with the pain, but when she accepts them she does feel better.  Christmas came early for her and we broke down and got a Nintendo DS and 2 games for her (even though I said she would never have a video game) – but it keeps her mind off of things for a while. 

As for her renal failure, it’s progressing rapidly.  When your kidneys are really bad, you loose a lot of your body’s protein through your urine and this causes fluid imbalances.  The protein is necessary in your blood to keep the fluid in the blood where it belongs.  However, in Grace’s case the protein is being dumped instead of retained in her blood, so she is accumulating a lot of fluid in her belly.  The dialysis nurse today attached a drainage bag to the end of her catheter/tube in hopes that the excess  fluid drains through it instead of around it.  Too much belly pressure and leakage will not allow her abdominal catheter site to heal and we’ll need to temporarily do hemodialysis (thru a port in her arm).  HOPEFULLY, the draining of her belly will do the trick.   

Thanks again for everyone’s thoughts, prayers, wishes, and help.  It is a big, big comfort to me knowing that we are not alone and everyone is so willing to do so much.  I’ll keep everyone posted, but it seems that one way or another Grace will be on dialysis by Thanksgiving week.  Ugh.

Love, Angie

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 9:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.