Don't touch that dial-alysis

So we are in a bit of a transition space here. New medications are increasing dad's urine output, but he still less than they want and less than he needs to get the fluid he's retaining out. Additionally his creatinine level (which indicate kidney function, lower is better) have been rising. Before his surgery he was at 1.6, last night he was 2.9. However their morning numbers put him at 2.8. If this continues to decrease in conjunction with increasing urine he could recover. However, they are not feeling particularly optimistic about that. Today a kidney specialist came up and looked as his file. Essentially he thinks that he wants to give the medication a little more time. But he suspects that they will need to move to dialysis. Apparently there two kinds of dialysis. There is the kind most people get which is three or four hours of intense blood cleaning. The drawback of this is that it can have a negative effect on blood pressure. Then there is another kind, it is a more slow process and runs for 24 hours. They refer to it as CRRT (continual renal refreshment therapy -- I think). Anyway this doesn't have the disadvantage of the blood pressure problem, but it does take the whole day. Still what they propose is actually a combination of the two. They start with the CRRT approach, this cleans his blood and hopefully he regains consciousness. Then they switch to the more traditional dialysis if they think he needs it. But the goal is to do it as few times as possible. Just enough to give his kidneys time to heal. On the other hand they don't want to go down this road at all if they can help it. So again we wait, we watch, we hope, we see. I should mention that the various tests they have run have not discovered anything problematic in his renal artery. This is good news because that would have been very bad. So their going off the theory that his kidney was distressed during the operation and give time and treatment it will recover. In the meantime I continue to spend most of my time in the waiting room. I'm lucky enough to have some friends willing to join me for dinner as I look forward to a bit of a break.