Chlorine and Ammonia and ESRD

[Marilee]

This might be a little "out there" - I'm always looking for solutions and I'm no scientist - but I thought this was worth sharing with other renal patients, just in case it actually has merit.

Last week, hubby and I had to postpone our trip to the Renal Clinic because he was suddenly and unexplainably ill, and since then I have made an environmental change that MIGHT be partly responsible.

The Event:

He felt fine upon waking, ate breakfast (the same breakfast items I had and the same as the day before), still felt fine, unhooked from the PD machine, still felt fine, went into the master bedroom's bathroom to get to the closet and suddenly felt weak, faint, sweat on forehead and nauseous. He sat down and waited for these feelings to pass. He put on a fresh shirt and left the closet, past the toilet, and then another wave of symptoms caused him to plop down on the side of the bathtub. He waited again but then vomited. He waited, walked to the car and vomited again. That's when he made his way back to his bed and collapsed, sleeping for a solid 6 hours.

What the heck!?!

To get to the closet, he had to go through the bathroom, which has a small commode for the toilet. I have recently been using a chlorine-based flush-cleaner that mixes with the flushing water to help keep all our toilet bowls more clean between manual cleanings, and this flush-cleaner releases a bit of chlorine smell/vapor into the air, and there's no windows (or any openings this time of year) in that area, and I had been in the bathroom minutes before and had flushed.

My Theory

I'm wondering if, being an ESRD patient, he's more sensitive to chlorine vapors: Perhaps it even combines with the ammonia that may be in his mouth, or even combines with excess ammonia/urea in his blood after inhaling the chlorine to form toxic combos like chlorine gas.

Assuming that might be the case, I removed those chlorine cleaners, and I'll avoid using chlorine in the bathrooms for a while to see if we can eliminate these episodes of otherwise-unexplainable bouts of nausea/vomiting/headache that have been plaguing him since the summer. I wish I could remember when I started using these chlorine cleaners, but I cannot.

Since making that change, we have both noticed that hubby is more mentally clear and stronger. We can’t say that there’s a correlation (there are so many variables and factors – including sodium levels, for example), but when we went to Clinic two days later (they rescheduled), everyone remarked that he looked much better than he has in recent months.

Anyway, thought I'd share because maybe chlorine vapors might be affecting others out there.

[cassandra]

Very interesting indeed. I know I can't cope with chlorine vapours at all, and never thought of the combination with the extra toxins floating around in me.


Thanx, Cas

[GA_DAWG]

I've never done PD, so I don't know if it produces the same symptoms as HD, but all of the symptoms you mention him having, the sweating, nausea, weakness and such are what it feels like when they remove too much fluid in HD.

[Marilee]

Yeah, they say that PD isn't as dramatic as HD in terms of fluid and electrolyte balance, but he's been doing more since the summer.

The symptoms also match a sudden loss of sodium and we've been working to boost his levels lately. I thought at first that this was because the night-time dialysis does remove sodium (ah, electrolyte balance - I totally took kidneys for granted before all this) - but it was the sudden-ness after walking past the bathroom that got me thinking that maybe there's more to the story.

Man, this is complicated.