Luis’s Road To Recovery

On Wednesday December 18th I took my husband Luis to kaiser in Napa for an appointment because the past couple of weeks he was feeling a bit off. He told me he hadn’t been feeling like himself and from what I was seeing I thought maybe he became anemic. We were at Kaiser for a few hours and they took pictures of his body because of a weird rash he had developed a few months ago,we just thought it was a form of eczema. He also had a lot of blood work done and a few Urine test. That same night Luis kept receiving calls from a number he didn’t know... it was the doctor from the lab and I knew something wasn’t right for them to be calling multiple times at 10:45 at night. Turned out Luis’s blood count was so low, the lowest the doctor had ever seen in his time working at the lab, and luis needed to be rushed to the Vallejo kaiser ER to receive a blood transfusion. A lot of the doctors were surprised and wondering how Luis was even standing and walking on his own with such a low blood count. After 45 min in the ER about 3 doctors came to see Luis. He was told he needed surgery to fix his kidneys and that was it. Well, it was more than that. Around 3 AM Thursday December 19th we were taken upstairs where they admitted him and he was finally able to get a bit of sleep. Around 9 am Thursday morning a nephrologist (kidney specialist) came to speak to us. He let us know that Luis’s blood work and kidney levels were abnormal and they had no idea why. His body wasn’t making enough blood and his kidneys weren’t filtering the little amount of blood that was in his body. The doctor told us that his kidney levels indicated that they were working less than 15% and also explained that the rash all over his body is from the kidneys not filtering some toxins that the blood has in it. He let us know that Luis needed to have an ultra sound of his kidneys. The reason why they wanted an ultrasound of his kidneys were to see if there were any blockages and if there were, they’d perform surgery to fix it. Turned out there were no blockages and they needed to do dialysis right away so they took him to get a catheter placed in his chest. Monday December 23rd Luis went into surgery for a couple of hours to have a catheter put into his stomach to continue dialysis because eventually the one in his chest needs to be removed due to high risks of infection. With no given date to go home it looks like we will be spending the holidays in the hospital. I have had to cut down on hours at work so I can be with my husband and of course he is no longer able to work due to dialysis. Since this is such a trying time we decided to make a go fund me to help with medical expenses and future plans such as dialysis, check ups and eventually his kidney transplant. We appreciate anything that you have to offer and we thank everyone who has already contributed on making this holiday better for us! May god bless you all as he is blessing us.