Fluid
There is a lot of down time in a hospital. You wait for the Doctor, for tests, for test results, for procedures, for food, for the nurse, and for the cleaning lady, etc. Therefore, when things start to get less scary and more boring, you might start clowning around to make your family laugh.
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This past Tuesday, my father was admitted to Christus Santa Rosa hospital in San Antonio. He was very weak and was suffering from abdominal pains. My mom called me on Wednesday morning and left me a voice mail message telling me that he was in the hospital for internal bleeding.
I was at work when I listened to her message. My head started swimming and I got sick to my stomach. About 30 minutes later, and after stopping by Human Resources to discuss FMLA, I was on the road to my house. About an hour and 45 minutes after I got home, I was packed and on the road to San Antonio with my husband behind the wheel.
The doctors found that my dad had a cyst on his kidney and it was filled with fluid. Six years ago, that very cyst on that same kidney had was discovered to contain 7 liters of fluid. It was roughly the size of a basketball. They drained the cyst and told my father that the only way to prevent it from happening again would be to remove the kidney. Well, that kidney was non-functional anyway so it's not like he would have missed it but he did not want to have an invasive surgery done at that time. Flash forward six years and here we are again.
Except this time, the cyst was larger.
Much larger.
Over seven liters larger.
Here I am at the grocery store, shopping for some grub for my belly and some visual aides for the blog.
The cyst now contained over 14 liters of fluid. Originally, we thought it contained over 15 liters of fluid, but we miscalculated. Still, it was friggen' huge!
The above photo shows seven two liter bottles of pop. Yup, that is the amount of fluid that was sloshing around in his abdomen.
Do you prefer gallons?
The cyst contained the nearly 4 gallons of fluid. DANG!
The doctors think that the cyst had capillaries along it's wall and that some of them were bleeding into the cyst. That would account for my dad's anemia.
After spending several days in the hospita, he is now home. The cyst was drained and he was given plenty of blood to replenish what he lost.
A nephrectomy will follow....hopefully next month.
posted by sarahsmile3 at
6:50 PM
5 Comments:
I love that you thought of us and gave us such great visuals. I'm glad your dad's doing better and shares your sense of humor (or at least it looks like it from the picture).
There should be some kinda award for going to the grocery store to line up soda bottles on the floor of the store to demonstrate how much fluid was drained from your father's kidney cyst.
That couple from the milk jug picture asked if they could have one of the jugs. Little did they know, it was a "cyst jug."
Now, a true new threat to America by the terrorists! Cyst Juice Jugs!
Yes, great visual aides! I will never look at a gallon the same way.
Glad you got to be there and help, I know it meant the world to both him and your mom.
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