Suggest Treatment For Symptoms Of Electrolyte Imbalance In The Body

Posted on Tue, 19 Jul 2016

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Tue, 19 Jul 2016 Answered on

Tue, 9 Aug 2016 Last reviewed on

Question : My mother is 79 years old, she has an illeostomy due to bladder cancer 4 1/2 years ago. After the surgery she had abscensses and was doctored for approximately 7 weeks getting rid of them. Then no trouble until the beginning of the year and because we live in a small town they said she had a urinary tract infection, the urologist put a scope down her ostomy looking for a blockage, none found that wa at the end of April, I then took her to Mayo Clinic May 15, there was an abscess but very small so we came back home, went back the next week, had a drain put in, back the next week, had drain removed, back 2 weeks late had drain put back in and she still has the drain. She is on IV Dapromyacin, Caprofungin and a third antibiotic of which I'm not sure of the name, she was going to the local hospital for infusions daily, a week ago last Friday, the nurses noticed that her color was bad, then Saturday her heart rate was tachy, Saturday night she fell, Sunday around 8 pm she fell again, my daughter and I got there and she could not walk on her own. It took 2 of us to take her to the car, we took her to the local ER, she was then put in he hospital for dehydration and sepsis. Her hand to mouth coordination is off which it wasn't prior to Sunday, she can't walk on her on, she is extremely week, she had diarrhea but has been better, doctor stopped her fluids on Friday, then when i requested to check her labs yesterday, it was found that she had a BUN of 17 which on Friday had been 7, here creatinine was 0.6, her WBC was 3.9 and has been several days, her HGB is 10.9. The doctor never came to see her today AT ALL. I am requesting her to be transferred back up to Mayo tomorrow. She was a healthty 79 year old who cleaned her own house, laundry, meals, walked up until Saturday of last week. There was a CT and MRI done of her head and shows nothing. Please help me. Tell me what I need to ask the doctors to do. I only have 1 mother, and I'm not ready to give up, nor is she. PLEASE HELP ME.
XXXXXXX XXXX

Answered by Dr. T Chandrakant (14 hours later)

Brief Answer:
Serum Electrolytes please and an opinion of a Neurologist

Detailed Answer:
Hi.
Thanks for your query about your Mother and an elucidate history.
I have read the history carefully and understood the concerns.
My thoughts:
The symptoms complex may be due to electrolyte imbalance. Please check the Blood electrolytes and if abnormal get corrected as it can improve your Mother's condition immediately on correction.
Rest of the treatment seems to be going on alright.
If WBC is 3.9, it is difficult to say this to be due to septicemia as the counts could have been more than 11 (11,000 upper limit)
BUN looks normal- up to 20.
Please take an opinion of a Neurologist, may help for clinical diagnosis since the CT and MRI are normal, there are many other conditions in which these investigations can appear normal as intra-cranial hypertension and so on.

I hope this answer helps to get the cause and get it corrected too.

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar