We are not catching a lot of breaks here. The dye used in dad's second leg embolization caused his one kidney to fail. The doctors didn't even mention this possibility to us because he had already had a procedure with the dye and had no ill effect. That coupled with the news that his tumors had grown made for a bad weekend.
Finally the doctors decided to try dialysis for three consecutive days. Monday was day 1. I grilled the doctor before he started the dialysis machine on everything including why he was choosing one port spot over another. The doctor assured me that any risks were minimal, especially the way he did the procedure. I tried to explain to him that our luck was such that the most unlikely bad things were going to happen to us. The doctor started the procedure, and we discovered he was allergic to the regular dialysis chemicals. He had respiratory trouble and a team of people had to come in and treat him with a nebulizer and tons of Benedryl. Not good. One nurse said that in 19 years of working there, only one other person had ever had an allergic reaction to the normal dialysis. They changed him to a radiation-based dialysis (which they only had available because of that one other person with the allergy). He was extremely cold (and I have never seen him cold before) and uncomfortable throughout the procedure, but that seemed to be the result of the original distress.
The next two days of dialysis have been uneventful, but his kidney has not started functioning again. And without his kidney he also can't go back to taking the kidney cancer drug Sutent. But right now he looks good, and feels okay, except for the pain in his leg and the exhaustion he feels from all the other medication. Hopefully the doctors tomorrow have a good plan for us.
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