I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: General Discussion => Topic started by: MomInDialysis on October 05, 2009, 07:09:38 PM
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Well, spent the Evening Night and Morning in ER with mom last night and today. Thoght she was having a heart attack, but discovered it was a spasm of the esophogus. What's next? I feel so bad for her. One good thing did come of it, if you can call it good. While there this morning and she was feeling good, no more problems with the esophogus, she started having one of her reactions like she gets in dialysis. Not having had dialysis since Saturday, we starting reflecting on what had taken place within the last hour/block of time. The found her potassium leve was at 5.4, so they gave her a bottle of medication to drink down, that helps to lower the potassium levels in the blood. They gave her 2 to drink and she did so. I don't know the name, but it causes the electrolytes to be filtered out into the intestine and passed through the stoole. It all happens quite quickly with mom, since she doesn't have any large intestine, she has had a colostomy for 48 years. She has no large intestine, and all stoole is passed involuntarily into a colostomy bag(appliance) that she wears 24/7. It was the exact symtoms she has at dialysis 1 hr into it and this started 1 hr after drinking the magic elixir. We could be close to the cause.....Now if we could just find something to help stop the reaction...
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Most likely they gave her Kayexalate.
Read about it: http://www.drugs.com/mtm/kayexalate.html
Usually if your potassium is high the first hour of dialysis starts to bring it down since it is very easily removed from the blood. What often happens is there is lots stored up in the tissue and it starts to transfer over to the blood.
Learn high potassium foods and avoid them: Bananas, Orange Juice, Potatoes etc...
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So you think it could be the muscular reaction to being depleted of potassium. She has had a problem of high levels of potassium since the start of dialysis. She is trying hard to avoid high potassium and medium level potassium foods. I guess the question now is "is she having this reaction because of the illiostomy". I will post a question asking people with illiostomies if they have had a reaction like this. See what the response is like.
I appreciate your explaination of the process Rerun. Thanks for the help.