kidney trouble--jeanie

[Guest guest]

Jeanie,

This is kind of a late reply. I've havn't been reading my mail for a

while.

I am sorry to hear about MacKenzie's kidney problems. Josh had Kidney

failure when he was in the hospital but it was due to post operative

complications. His heart was not working properly and so his kidneys

did not get enough blood flow and shut down Josh's kidneys were not

the reason that he passed away. I just want to make sure that you

understand that first, Josh passed away because of problems with his

heart and not because of his kidneys.

Josh was finally put on kidney dialysis 6 days after his surgery

because he was not making urine. The thing that I learned about

kidneys is that it's a very good thing if they're peeing. Josh

didn't pee very much for three weeks because of the kidney failure.

Once he had 15 cc's and all the doctors and nurses were about ready to

throw a party! If MacKenzie is making urine then that is a very very

good sign!

The kidney dialysis was a big deal mostly just because Josh was so

unstable. He had dialysis done for 2 weeks and he did fine with it He

had it continuous but I know that a lot of people just have it done a

few times a week for a few hours. When the Nephrologist said that it's

" enough to live on " he probably feels that she is having adaquate urine

output. They probably tested her blood and they can tell a lot from

that about how the kidneys are doing. One doctor told me that a lot of

people live with just one kidney.

They continued to do the kidney dialysis for Josha and they were

confident that his kidneys would recover eventually and that they had

just taken a really big hit. Sometimes people are on dialysis for a few

weeks before there kidneys finally kick in and start working again.

For about four mornings before Josh went into the hospital, my

husband would change his diaper and Josh would pee on him. Well, it was

kind of funny in the hospital cause my husband told him he could pee on

him or any of the doctors or nurses that he wanted to, if he just

would. It's kind of funny the things you get excited about in the

hospital and who ever would have thought that urine was one of them.