I didn't get any pics from yesterday's OR trip like I like to do - I was just too miserable feeling to remember the camera, but I finally downloaded my pics from the ER about the foley catheter. Why on Earth would I take pics like this? Because I'm that fascinated with medicine and I was trying to get my mind off of dying lol. I've had femcaths before but never had a real foley.

More importantly, these series of pics show just how non-existent my urine output was. I had a high fever, chills, nausea, kidney pain, and my hands, ankles and feet were swollen. I was starting to lose it too - everything was kinda foggy. I seriously thought I was dying at one point.

Pic #1 - immediately after the cath was placed - note the lack of urine:



After it was placed, my nurse actually said, "Huh. Nothing's coming out - let me see if the tubes are twisted or something." I let her know that I was there for no output/kidney failure. They were busy, so no one had told her yet. Go Navy.

Pic #2 - a half hour after the bolus IV started:



I'm not kidding. They look the same, but it's a totally different shot. We should be producing 30ml an hour, and it had been about an hour and a half since I checked in.

A while later the nurse came in to hand-squeeze the rest of the bag in. That's when she said my creatinine levels were fine, but my BUN (blood/urea/nitrogen) levels were high, showing that my kidneys were mad.

Pic #3+4 - I was at the ER from 10:00pm until 1:00am. This was taken right after the nurse hung my new bag of fluids. She messed with my tubes and re-taped them just to make sure she didn't mess up, which she totally didn't:



I finally made a drop of urine!

Pic #5 - So. After 3 hours in the ER with 2 bolus bags of IV fluids and another half a bag, this is all I managed to squeeze out, but they brought me back from acute kidney failure. My discharge nurse wasn't happy with the amount and walked it over to my doc, and he was on the fence, but my regular nurse said it was on the low end of text-book normal. STILL - it was so not like me after a bolus IV. I'm usually scrambling to the bathroom an hour in with my IV pole in tow so I can pee buckets, but hey - my kidneys were working!





Isn't that scary? I'm so glad I went and didn't wait any longer to go in, although my kidneys had stopped working hours ago and I was too sick to notice.

After my surgery yesterday, in which I won and had an epidural instead of general anesthesia, I physically couldn't pee because of the numbness but my bladder was so full after 4 hours (I was given lidocane first which didn't work, then micane? (sp) so I was extra numb for 4 hours) that I asked the nurse to help me out. I couldn't use a bedpan because of the lack of feeling, so she put in a femcath to drain my exploding bladder. They took out about a liter of urine!!! Now that's more like my normal.

We don't know why my kidneys crapped out (no clot or anything), but I'm back to peeing like a champ for now! w00t!