“Self, where has David, the RNS resident legal eagle, gone off too?”
You could say that he has been hosting his own episode of “House M.D.“.
Here it is in his own words:
A cautionary tale: So this all started out with my cholesterol meds. I began taking Simvastatin about a year ago. Fast forward to Memorial Day this year, when I caught a stomach virus. I threw up dry-heave bile more than fifty times in the next day or so, nonstop. I was already dehydrated; that made it worse. Not eating for a couple days straight didn’t help either. Unknown to me or anyone else, I developed pneumonia — potentially fatal for me as I lost my spleen many years ago. I finally went in to see the doc on Thursday. Â She diagnosed stomach flu (duh!) but because she wasn’t my regular doc, she ordered some tests.
These saved my life.
Back home from the doc, resting and looking forward to the weekend, I felt fine but tired. Little did I know…how often in life will you get a call like this?
“Hello, David? Yes I know it’s after six pm, I’m sure you’re surprised to hear from me. Listen, I just got your tests back and you are in both kidney failure and liver failure. You could go into seizures at any moment. Hang up with me and call 911.”
I still felt fine, but got the ambulance ride to the hospital and I’m still here a week later. What they think happened is this:
Rabdomyalysis is massive breakdown of muscle tissue. It can be triggered by, inter alia, Â a year on statin drugs, or a bacterial infection, both of which I had. That gave a false indication (creatinine) that my liver was failing (it wasn’t). They thought it was for a time, and I had ER docs wandering over to chat with me because I was lucid and aware when the tests were indicating I should be drooling braindead mush.
More seriously, my kidneys were overloaded by the rabdomyalysis (acute tutular necrosis), and I needed immediate dialysis, which has continued every other day or so. I’m slowly but steadily urinating more each day, so the kidneys are taking their time coming back online, but permanent dialysis is, I think, not in my future.
I’m still fighting some bacterial crap. One fun thing about hospitalization is the docs trying to figure out every little anomalous thing about you. In my case, a bike accident as a kid ruptured my spleen into scores of pieces all throughout my abdomen. The surgeon couldn’t get them all and suspected the remaining pieces might regenerate into mini spleens. Well, the docs were freaking out about these eight weird soft-tissue blobs that showed up in my cat scan, like alien chestbursters scattered throughout my body. I seem, in fact, to have eight mildly functional spleens! Kewl, eh?
As for hospital life, I was in ICU for four days; I’ve been stable since and am in a nice private room with a view of Mount Diablo. I have great food (really!), great care, and its just a matter of time till the infections go away, kidneys restart and I’m outta here. Maybe another week. Frustrating, but its nice to be alive, so I can’t complain. No blogging though — I just have my blackberry with me and we never figured out how to post from that.
Lesson learned: when you pass 40, see your doc early and often for things you might have toughed out on your own as a younger man.
David
An update from last night: He’ll most likely be released this afternoon or evening but will still need dialysis three times a week until the creatinine levels go down to normal.
Once he gets home I’m sure he’ll have lots to say, so wish him luck and check back for updates from the man himself.