Pain at a 10!

Poor Craig!  On Tuesday (2 days ago) he was awakened in the late morning suddenly with horrible pain in his abdomen.  Unfortunately I was not home so he had to deal with it by himself for a little while until I received a desperate text to come home asap!  When I got home the poor guy was moaning and more miserable than I've seen him for a long time. It was unbearable pain. We went up to the Acute Care Center at Huntsman Hospital which is so much better than going to an ER. They know his history and could immediately get him into a room. His pain was at a 9-10 and the morphine they gave him did not touch the pain. His whole abdomen was very tender and the center of the pain was right at his belly button. Even jiggling his bed at all created pain. They gave him morphine and it still wasn't hitting the pain.  He had a CT scan that showed a kidney stone but it was not where it should cause pain. His kidney looked inflamed so there is something going on there. Dilaudid was then given for pain and after about 4 doses of that he started to feel some relief!  He was moved to a room in the hospital and started to settle down more. They wouldn't let him eat or drink all day because there was a possibility of doing surgery or a procedure under anesthesia. His mouth was extremely dry and he could only suck on little ice chips. They continued the Dilaudid through the night and he was able to rest.

On Wednesday, his pain disappeared and he was able to touch his stomach again without pain.  Amazingly the pain didn't come back all day. The doctors are not sure what caused the pain in the first place.  The scan didn't show a bowel obstruction/perforation or internal bleeding.  The doctors said that sometimes we don't know the answers. I didn't like that answer!  Later in the afternoon the 3 doctors came in (all oncologists!) with news about his kidneys.  He has Acute Tubular Necrosis which means the kidney is breaking down inside and granules of the tubes are showing up in the urine.  This usually occurs when there's been a trauma like a heart attack or stroke. We really can't figure out what happened but it must have something to do with the pain. Now we know that the kidneys are worse than we thought. They can sometimes repair themselves if you don't have any other health issues. Obviously, he does. The doctors took him off his cancer drug, Sutent, which they feel is contributing to his kidney issues.  They also took him off his blood pressure medicines to preserve kidney function. His creatinine level is now 3.2 where it should be under 2. He's been flirting with above 2 for the last year but now it's gone much higher.  The protein in his urine is also too high which means Kidney Wasting Disease.  His level is 3 grams.

Today is Thursday and he is doing well but wants to go home. They want to observe him another day. The issue now will be what to do about the cancer and still keep his kidney function going.