"That stuff's the $#!!"

Paul is doing a bit better now. The dialysis last night showed that it is working. His blood work came back and his potassium levels are lower than before. I'm told that normal levels are around 5-5.2, Paul's were 7 last night. The 3:30am bloodwork showed them at 6, so that's good. It's progress. I spoke to Dr. Jimenez this morning and he said it's looking good, he'll continue to be on dialysis once a day until his bloodwork comes back perfect and his kidneys are properly functioning (til he pees).

It turns out that the dialysis actually dialyzes some of the morphine out of his blood, so pain was pretty difficult to manage last night. Paul told us this morning that they had doubled his morphine dose and it worked for a bit, but starts to wear off quickly. We had the nurse call the doc who said he could have Alotin, which is apparently the drug that all the druggees want... Within 2 minutes, Paul said "That stuff's the $#!!" Musta been working. A few minutes later, he called the nurse over just to thank him for giving it to him. :) Hopefully this one works a bit longer and absorbs in his system before dialysis has a chance to take it out.

Todd, today's dialysis dude came in to set up the machine and gave Dad and I an explanation of how it works. It's really quite remarkable and has lots of safety features to make sure there are no clots or air bubbles, etc. Pretty cool machine. The day nurses are a bit more strict and wouldn't let us stay for dialysis, so we've come home. It takes about 3 hours, so we'll be back at 1:30 to check up on him and hang out until shift change again at 6.

I've heard some questions about how he's doing, if he's awake, etc. He is with it, he knows what's going on, talks to us and all that. He's just really dealing with a lot of muscle pain (from the muscles breaking down and from being held in an awkward position for so long). When I'm there, I do a lot of muscle massages and holding his legs up a bit to stretch his hamstrings and buttocks, it seems to be helping a bit. I imagine he's going to be extremely sore after all this is over and wouldn't be surprised if he was given some exercises to do.

I'll let you all know how this afternoon goes. I imagine it will be another 3-4 hours after dialysis until they get bloodwork results back showing how this round worked.