In October, Paul would occassionally lose a little pressure when peeing. In November he finally went to see our general doc. His bp was high and dr thought that the urination problem would likely clear up if his bp were lower, so he started him on lisinopril. January his peeing hadn't gotten any better and was occassionally painful. Dr referred him to the urologist. After an office visit and ultrasounds to check the bladder volume before and after "voiding" they learned he
was only voiding 2/3 of his urine. He suspected that he had a urethral stricture and wanted to scope Paul and administer a contrast dye to find out. Paul opted to have this done the following week under anestesia (understandable if you ask me...).
The following tuesday, dr was proven right. In the pic from the scope, about the size of a silver dollar, pauls urethra opening was about the size of a pinhead. The xray with the contrast dye revealed two strictures, close together, near his bladder. He couldn't fix it that day so he inserted a suprapubic catheter to relieve the pressure on the bladder.
The next step was to let the sp tube mature, let his urethra heal up, then do surgery in a few weeks. So on Wednesday, he performed a buccal mucosa urethroplasty where he took a graft out of his cheek about the size of a skinny post-it flag, maybe a little shorter, and grafted it over his urethra which had been cut open. All of this was happening from underneath with an incision between his scrotum and anus. (you were warned!!!)
From here you can read the blog from the last couple days. The summary is that they believe he developed a rare condition called rhabdomyolysis caused by some combination of a long surgery, an inverted, legs spread open position, and low bp during surgery.
I got to talk to our friend and doctor tonight who got to talk at length this morning with the nephrologist. He's been a dr for 30+ yrs and has seen this once in a patient who had a weird reaction to a med. It's definitely rare. He told me that Paul was pretty sick but that everyone expects a full recovery. He said the rhabdomyolysis takes about a week to run it's course, and then Pauls body can work on cleaning up the mess. It may take a few months for his kidneys to
fully recover so he'll likely be on dialysis a few times a week until then. He expects Paul to be in the hospital for about two weeks. Pauls drs haven't given us any timeframes, probably so we don't get any hopes dashed, but I think it's good to have a ballpark.
Wow, so that wasn't so short... The really short answer is that he will recover, but he has a long road ahead. Please continue the prayers they are felt and we are so thankful for them.
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