Wondering if anyone has any advice.

[greekboy77]

hey everyone. just wondering if anyone has any advice or any experience with this situation my mom is going through. My mom has been on dialysis since March with relatively no problems till recently. Since last week after her session was done, her  blood pressure dropped from 140 to under a 100. Shortly after she experiences strange symptoms of mental problems where she can't communicate. She stands there with this strange expression and repeats "I'm ok" over and over again and confuses all of our names. this lasts for about 10minutes then all is back to normal. When it first happened we called the ambulance thinking it was a stroke. She was hospitalized for a few days and they did CT scans, MRI, and EEG and all was normal. She had two dialysis sessions in the hospital with no problems. She was released yesterday and had dialysis this morning and the same thing happened again where she's just "lost" for a few minutes. Her doc is stumped and its frustrating not knowing what is going on, not to mention scary when these episodes happen.  Any ideas or suggestions what to do or what to ask her doctors?
Thanks for any help

[jbeany]

That sounds terrifying!  I don't have any advice, I'm afraid.  Just this - 

[RichardMEL]

I'm no medico but sounds like not enough blood getting to the brain (due to low BP) could be causing the confused mental state. She shouldn't be leaving dialysis with a low BP like that. I mean the staff shouldn't let her leave like that. Sounds like her dry weight is off if the BP is dropping like that. Probably need to raise it a bit.

[peleroja]

Sounds like they're taking off too much fluid, causing her BP to drop.  They should be keeping her longer and perhaps giving her some broth to bring her BP back up.  I never experienced what your mom is going through, but once when they took off too much fluid (without telling me), I passed out in the store when I went shopping afterward. 

[Bajanne]

I am so sorry to hear of what your mother has been going through.  I find it strange that the professionals seem to be baffled when what RichardMEL and Peleroja seem to have come up with quite reasonable suggestions.

Glad to have you join our site.  Could you please go to the Introduce Yourself section and let us get to know you and your Mom better?  This is a tremendous place for information and support.  Our caring thoughts are with you.  Trust things get sorted out very soon.

[paris]

You will find answers quicker here than at the doctors office.  Our members have experienced so much.   It does sound like the low BP is really causing the problems.  I do hope they can figure this out and your Mom starts doing better. 

[Romona]

 
I hope you and your Mom find answers.

[drinkboy]

The only experience I have that is somewhat close to that is when my mom's pressure dropped real low she got dizzy and passed out on several occasions but that was about it.  Hopefully someone else can give you some better insight.

[jamoman]

you`ve been sucked beyond dry,best wishes.

[lola]

Otto had the same thing, they adjusted his dry weight and then he was fine.

[flip]

Three possible solutions come to mind:

1) Increase her dry weight. People often gain muscle weight due to increased protein and calories. When you weight in before dialysis, the staff usually sees it all as fluid gain. Running a Crit Line would help.

2) Change the machine profile to one that removes less fluid during the last hour.

3) Hook "straight up" so that she gets saline as soon as the blood pump starts.