Horror story with a question attached

[bevvy5]

Hubby went into the hospital on Dec 17 with rapid pulse and low blood pressure.

Long story short, he contacted C-diff, a nasty colon bug, probably due to antibiotics he was using for what was thought to be cellulitis but turned out to be a reaction to some antibiotics he had taken two weeks before.  The C-diff almost killed him.

Then he developed two different infections in his peritoneal cavity (don't even get me going on the incompetence of the nursing staff in doing PD), plus a yeast infection.  Long story short, they've yarded out his PD catheter and he will be on hemo for at least three months.  Hopefully his peritoneum hasn't been damaged so that he's stuck on hemo for good.

My question is, for those who have had to go off PD, how do they "test" to see if you can go back to PD?  Is it simply try again and see how it works?  Is it unusual for the catheter to be removed if hemo is needed for a short time or is that the norm?

Thank you in advance.

[CCStan]

OH Bevy, so sorry to hear about your hubby's issues.  I hear you and feel your pain re: poor hygeine of nursing staff while hospitalized.  You should contact the Nursing supervisor and demand that nursing staff caring for PD patients have in service and be certified on caring for PD dialyisis patients.  This is so important .  Bad enough one has to be hopitalized, then have peritoneal infections caused by sloppy nursing.

Hope the New Year treats both of you better   Take care for the both of you.

CCStan

[Hanify]

Quite normal I belive.  I had to do haemo again briefly when I had to get my tube repositioned - but not for 3 months!

[girliekick]

i dont know about the testing, i bet some one will give you a good answer on that, as i am interested too. I go tomorrow to see if my perotinitis has cleared up, if not out w the cath in the belly and in w one in the neck. I asked my neph, infectious disease, pcp, and nurses what the chances were that the cath would need to be removed. It was a pretty unanimous answer. Appx 1/2 the time. If the infection is resistant to antibotics, or if the infection is in or attached to the tube, or in your case  where the antibotics, have wiped out all the good bacteria in ur hubby causing both the cdiff and the yeast.
Hope this helps and i hope things get better soon.
Girl

[billybags]

hi bevvy5, My husband got a very bad e-coli bug which gave him peritonitis in July and I thought I was going to lose him too. It took about 3 weeks in hospital and 3 different antibiotics to get him ok. His tube had to be taken out and he was on Hemo for about 4 months. They can tell by blood counts if your body is fighting a virus and his slowly went down after about 8 weeks. He had a catheter replacement in the middle of November and is now back on to CAPD alass it is not working as good as it was. The surgeon said his peritoneal was not damaged but that the tube had been fitted too high up, so he will have to have another replacement, goodness knows when. They are trying alsorts of ways to get it to drop. It use to take him 30 min from start to finish to do CAPD now it takes about 50 min. It gets so frustrating. But doing this compared to hemo is worth it.

[kellyt]

You know, when I was in the hospital for my transplant the nurses and doctors always used the sanitizer on the wall before touching me.  But I was told to make them clean their stethoscope before using that, too, because doctors will usually rub in on the pants or tie to "warm it up".  And as you know, ties don't get washed, so there could be a number of things on them.

I had a friend in the room with me when the doctor came in and she handed him an alcohol swab.  He asked "What's this for?" and she told him to clean his scope.  He was shocked at first, but gladly obliged and then he was the one who told us about the nasty ties.  ick.

[peleroja]

I developed perotinitis from pseudomonas and had to go on hemo for 6 months.  They removed the PD catheter to make sure that in spite of the massive amounts of antibiotics I was taking no bugs attached themselves to the catheter and stayed around for round two.  I'm assuming blood tests revealed that I was finally free of critters. 

[bevvy5]

Thank you muchly for your answers.  Sounds like removal of the catheter isn't that far off the norm.

Greg is doing much better, just a matter of time to get him on his feet and home.  We're both taking it a day at a time - hopefully PD will be possible in the future.