I came home one day and showed my wife a bubble on my hybrid fistula graft. She looked at it and said it look like an infection. So we contacted my kidney doctor and told her what we saw. She immediately made an appointment for me to see the vascular surgeon the next day. After the surgeon looked at it, he said we would treated it with antibiotics for 2 to 3 weeks. I went on with my day thinking that the matter was over.
The surgeon called my kidney doctor to tell her the results. She reminded him that I was a liver transplant patient and that they couldn’t treat me for 2 to 3 weeks with antibiotics. So the kidney doctor call me back Thursday night and told me my surgery was scheduled for Monday morning. I immediately said what surgery? They said the old graft had to come out and they would put in a new one. They would also need to put in a port, so they could do dialysis while I healed. So Monday morning around 9 AM we showed up for my surgery.
They finally took me in around 1:30 in the afternoon and ended up in recovery around 6:30 PM. They were able to go around the old graft with the new graft; pull out the old graft that the surgeon said had not wanted to come out; and get the port in. The next day I had to go to the foot doctor. The bandage on my arm had stains from the leakage of blood. But the port in my chest was losing a little blood out of the bottom of the incision. I believe this is the quickest appointment I ever had with the foot doctor. He was great and put an additional bandage on my chest where the port was. From there I went back to the hospital where I had a appointment with my kidney doctor. The nurse saw where I was leaking and called for the surgeon to take a look.
So before I saw my kidney doctor I had already been treated by the foot doctor and the vascular surgeon. Both of who bandaged me back up.
Below are pictures of both the port and the graft. As you can see I have a lot of bruising but funny enough less then last time according to my wife. I am really looking forward to when they remove the port so they can remove the stitches in my neck that are holding the port’s internal tubing in place.
port
new graft location
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