During the past few weeks since Morgan's surgery we have been experiencing many emotions and situations. The day after surgery she began hemodialysis for 3 hours a day for 3 days. With HHD her blood was removed from her body cleaned in a machine and then pushed back into her body. This is a high risk procedure on anyone, but even more risky on someone Morgan's size. All went well until there was a blood clot in the line. When the blood is outside of the body it wants to clot and there are blood thinning medicines that can help to prevent the blood from doing this called Heparin. The day after surgery it was very difficult for Morgan to have very much of this medicine due to the fact that in order for her surgical wounds to heal they needed her blood to clot around the wounds. Thankfully they were able to let some of the medicine sit in her catheter and they carried on with her dialysis.
After 3 days of HHD she began her first day of PD. This started out very smoothly. The catheter was working great and everything was going well. Unfortunately, after only two days she contracted an infection in her peritoneal cavity. It was very scary watching her go through all of the pain the infection was causing. Thankfully they were on top of it and got her on antibiotics right away. The infection cleared up, but not without causing damage. They had to discontinue PD and begin HHD for 4 more days, and her internal organs became damaged and sensitive due to the infection and all of the antibiotics. Her stomach was in pain and she could not tolerate her feeds so they placed a NG-tube (feeding tube through her nose) that went past her stomach and into her small intestine. She has been receiving her feeds continuously since.After her four days back on HHD they were able to start her PD again. Because of the infection they had to use a high concentration dialysate that would pull more fluid off of her. They were able to dry her up as of two days ago and they slowly began to lower the concentration and add more fluid on her by increasing her feeds. She has done very well. For the first time in her life she is not on any blood pressure medicine. She is happy and smiling every day and she is moving along well.
We still have a couple weeks of figuring her dialysis and feeds out. They are hoping to start feeding her in her stomach again soon, and get her back to feeding the way she was before her infection. Once she is all set we will do some training for dialysis in the hospital and then she will be discharged and we will complete our training at DaVita. After training is complete and we feel comfortable we will be sent home. This has been an emotional ride and it is not over for us. We plan to do everything we can to avoid infection in the future and look forward to having our baby home until transplant.
