This is a Life/Health Discussion
By tina12679
@tina12679 (1126)
United States
June 18, 2008 2:34pm CST
This ia about my mother. To give you some backround on her she is 59 years old and has worked very hard her entire life. Up until this past April she worked at a landscaping distributer, she is the one bags all the potting soil and all other materials that you can buy from stores for planting and landscaping. This is a very hard job your on your feet all day standing in one place and sometime lifting up to 80 pound bags. So now here it is, all of a sudden the last day of March she noticed a rash breaking out on her legs. She said it felt like it was burning her, but didnt pay alot of attention to it as she thought maybe she was having an allergic reaction to something, but as the day pregressed the worse the rash became. My neice gave her no choice and forced her to go to a ER. After there they did the basic lab tests and found that she was on borderline Kindney failure and they Life flighted her to a bigger better hospital. While there they ran test upon test meanwhile my mothers rash was disapearing. No you have to know that while she had that rash she had no other symptoms of anything else other then being chilled she was fine. So she spent 2 weeks in the hospital her kidney functions were slowly beiginning to get better but a biopsy of them found some scarring from something and they looked further into the problem. At last they finally diagnosed her with ANCA Associated Associated Vasculitis, which to my understanding from the doctors is a autoimmune disease and compoletly treatable. It is acually treated much like cancer, she is placed on high doses of steriods then a drug called cytoxan which is a cancer treatment drug, keeping in mind that her disease is NOT cancer. But since April when she was diagnosed she has been life flighted once more to the main hospital and transported once(but should have been life flighted then as well) The first time after her diagnosis was because she had pulminary distress and had to be intabated and then have a broncostomy done to drain fluids from her lungs. She spent 2 weeks in the hospital for that, she had a drain placed in her to drain all the fluid out that had aparently came from the vessels in her lungs leaking blood which is caused by the vasculitis. This last time she was taken down she had to have emergency surgery on her intestines, she had diverticulits and had 2 abseses rupture and leak bile and fluids into her belly. She is still in recovering from that. So within the last 3 months she has had all these problems after never really being sick a day in her life. Her kidney function still fluctuates from ok to not so ok and so far hasnt went as far as her needing dialisis, they also found a small leak in her heart that when she is under more stress seems to worsen a little. She is also now got high blood pressure, which she is on at least 3 different meds to control which is what they believe caused this diverticulitis and she now has a colostomy bag probualy for the next 4 months. My question to all of you is.....does anyone else know anyone or is someone who has had this. I would like to know what all you or the person you know went through and if there is a brighter ending then there seems to be at this moment. Will my mother ever be anything close to herself again? The doctors also said that once this is treated that there is a chance or reacurrance. And I was wondering if anyone has went through that as well. So please anyone with any information or anything please respond Thank You all!!
I also posted a picture of the rash that she got in the beginning.
1 person likes this
2 responses
@lilybug (21107)
• United States
19 Jun 08
I do not know anyone who has ever had vasculitis or kidney failure. The rash looks pretty bad. I just wanted to respond to let you know that I did read your post and hopefully someone will have some information to share with you. I wish your mom the best.
@tina12679 (1126)
• United States
20 Jun 08
Thank you for taking the time to read my post, I did notice that it did seem pretty lenghty after I posted it. I just wanted to make sure that I got all the information I could in it. I do hope that someone will stumble across it that knows something about it. Thank you for your responce.
1 person likes this
@honeydew82174 (1720)
• United States
18 Jun 08
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@tina12679 (1126)
• United States
20 Jun 08
We have learned these past few months not take one minute for granted and spend as much time with her a possible. Thank you for your reponce.
1 person likes this
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