As you can imagine, the events of last year have been fore front in our mind this month. We each have re-read the blogs entries, often with tears streaming down our face, trying to figure out just how we survived. Earlier this week were talking about the tragic events that led to us being locked down at Huntsman the night before Halloween. When a similar event led to things being locked down again, we were so grateful to be safe at home. What a crazy world we live in! However, much to our surprise, here we are again almost exactly one year later in a room facing the courtyard that held so much fear. Luckily the darkness outside isn't terrifying and there are no helicopters searching. Instead however we are again facing a familiar demon.
Chris hasn't been feeling well for the past week which is sadly pretty typical. Today is the start of his week free of chemo and during the last week he always feels pretty crummy. We are trying to learn to recognize and be sensitive to different symptoms and this felt different. He's been very weak and had no energy. We thought perhaps he was low on hemoglobin again and likely would need another transfusion. However, when you feel like crap, it's hard to sometime pinpoint what's wrong and how it's different. When he started to have lower back pain over the weekend we knew something was off and reached out to his team on Monday. They were able to schedule labs and today we went to Huntsman in Daybreak to have them drawn.
They came back pretty quickly and among other things his creatinine is 4.5. He's in kidney failure. :( Instead of being transferred across the hall to the ER we convinced them to just arrange for us to go to the ACC (ER like department) at Huntsman. We figured the next step would be being admitted and riding up in our car was much preferred to an ambulance. Once situated in the ACC, Dr Sborov stopped in to see us. They are running lots of tests and we'll hope to know more in the morning. However we think that the changes the kidney doctor made to his meds last month have caught up with him and have stressed his kidneys. Less than a month ago they ran his myeloma labs and they were good, so Dr Sborov doesn't think it's that the chemo has quit working, more labs tonight will hopefully confirm that.
We didn't even actually see a Dr in the ACC and were moved to his room about shift change time. When the new aide came in, he not only recognized us from our visits to Huntsman this summer, he came right over and gave me a hug. While I'd much prefer that Huntsman wasn't the place "where everyone knows your name", it does provide a bit of comfort to have a familiar face providing care and helping Chris.
So while we hoped to be at home tonight celebrating Halloween and greeting the ghouls and goblins on our doorstep we're hopeful that they will be able to figure out and resolve the issues that brought us here. It will likely be a long night.
Hang in there, love you guys.
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