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Blistered Feet, Bedside Debridement, and Permanent Dialysis

Day 2 · 1:29:49 · Shawn Buckley · Cameron Hitchcock · Dean Allison · Michael Oesch

  • 🦶 Extreme foot swelling and blistering required plastic surgeons to cut away over 30% of the surface area at the bedside.
  • 💉 Steroid-resistant disease forced six-day-a-week dialysis that permanently shut down his remaining kidney function.
  • ⏳ He remains on the deceased-donor list with a 12-year average wait and expects any future transplant to eventually fail.

Photos of catastrophic foot injury and the irreversible move to lifelong dialysis.

← Five-Month Hospital Nightmare: Prednisone, Thirst, and Immobility | Q&A: Did Doctors Link Hitchcock’s Injury to the Vaccine? →

Transcript

Shawn Buckley · 1:29:49

Can you share?

Cameron Hitchcock · 1:29:49

I took that picture the night before I, uh, I woke up unable to move. Um, that's just, uh, that's what nephrotic syndrome does. It's That's when you can't pass urine and the fluid just stays in your body. I was drowning in my body, basically.

Shawn Buckley · 1:30:04

Okay. So when you're talking about swelling feet, I mean, we all have a picture in our minds, but this is what it looked like.

Dean Allison · 1:30:09

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley · 1:30:10

So, and my understanding is this— well, let's flip to the next, next photo. Um, can you share with us what this is showing?

Cameron Hitchcock · 1:30:18

So this is after I'm admitted to Georgetown again. Um, What happened was, I'm not sure if you have the other one where there's the compression sock on it, but, um, I forget why there was a bandage on my foot and then on both feet and then the compression sock, uh, and it was causing a lot of pain because it was pushing fluid out of my feet. And then, um, uh, basically we got— the nurse came in, he took them off, but he said, uh, looks like there's basically a tourniquet on your feet right now. And he said, I can cut this off or I can pull it off. And being me being stupid, I said, save the socks, pull it off. Which was worse. And then it pulled— it pushed all this fluid out of my feet. And then the next night, all that fluid still, it was like pushing back into my feet and I was screaming in pain all night. I'd take pain meds. That's the only time I accepted any kind of strong pain meds from the doc, from the nurse. But Yeah. So then the fluid ended up pushing back into my foot and it was just the most pain ever.

Cameron Hitchcock · 1:31:23

It was very painful.

Michael Oesch · 1:31:24

Sure.

Shawn Buckley · 1:31:26

And then, then you ended up losing your kidneys.

Cameron Hitchcock · 1:31:30

Yeah. So they, they gave me lots of chances. They ran this Lasix albumin. They, they were— they added cyclosporine and another just hopefully solve the problem. And then finally they said, we can't get this fluid off without dialysis. Like, this, this isn't working. You're not, you're not responding to the steroids. Steroid resistant. So that's when the nephrologist came in and with the hospital doctor who I've had before, which was good. And she and they kind of just said like, like, we're done, we're going to dialyze you 6 days a week. Uh, something we missed here was the— that you can see there's a spot there. Um, uh, when I was being transferred again, my feet leaned against the ambulance and caused blistering. And then, uh, the wound care specialist nurse came in to see me to deal with them because they were turning black almost.

Cameron Hitchcock · 1:32:34

And He said he's never seen something like that. He would have come immediately if he understood what they looked like. And then he had said he had to call a friend. He came back with a plastic surgeon and they started this. I think it was over 30% of the surface area of my feet. They had to cut it off on the bedside. And yeah, that was a little— that hurt a little bit. And then I was— I had wound care for the next 2 months on my feet daily. They had to rebandage.

Shawn Buckley · 1:33:03

I just need to— to focus us because we have limited time and I want them to ask you questions. So they start dialysis, which then that's the death knell for your kidneys. So your kidneys shut down.

Cameron Hitchcock · 1:33:15

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley · 1:33:16

You've been on dialysis now for a long time. It's necessary for you to survive and you're on a transplant list to get kidneys.

Cameron Hitchcock · 1:33:26

Yeah.

Shawn Buckley · 1:33:27

But when I was interviewing you earlier, I mean, you made it clear, you know, even if I get a kidney transplant, I know I'm going to be on dialysis again.

Cameron Hitchcock · 1:33:36

Yeah, I'm on the deceased donor list, uh, so they say the average for that is 12 years, so that might— doesn't even get me to 50, but I'm not great. Um, and then, so yeah, then I'll be waiting again or, uh, on dialysis. Hopefully they figured out something better than what we have now, but Yeah, it's just a kind of— you, you expected that it's eventually going to fail because the, the way a transplant works is that you have to take medication that is also nephrotoxic. It hurts the kidney, and your body is always trying to reject it too. So you take this anti-rejection medication that eventually does the kidney.

Shawn Buckley · 1:34:19

Thank you. Those are my questions.

Dean Allison · 1:34:21

Thanks for being here. Yeah.