Yes, Lamar Odom is in Los Angeles after being released from the Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas. But TMZ is reporting that he’s still not doing great, and the biggest concern surrounds his failing kidneys.
Following his Oct. 3 collapse into a coma, four of Odom’s organs were reportedly in bad shape. Since then, all but the kidneys have rebounded. One TMZ source says simply, “His kidneys are shot.”
Lamar’s currently at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he can receive more specialized kidney care than he would have at Sunrise. That includes six hours of dialysis a day.
The doctors are also reportedly giving Lamar brain tests to assess the damage his stroke caused.
Despite the TMZ report about the dialysis and the possible need for a kidney transplant, Dr. S. Adam Ramin — a leading urologist and medical director of Urology Cancer Specialists in Los Angeles, according to HollywoodLife — says that Lamar’s kidneys can make a full recovery despite being on dialysis.
“Dialysis can be used as a way to take out certain toxins. It may not necessarily be for a true kidney failure. It is used to quickly clean the blood and get those toxins out of the body. When a patient develops a problem that essentially causes them to go into a coma, some of the organs in the body start failing. It is fairly common for the kidneys to fail. In most instances healthy humans can go back to have normal kidney function within a few days or weeks. The kidney can regain function, but during the time the kidneys are not working, dialysis is required.
“When a person collapses and passes out, in many instances, that is because their blood pressure is really low. Drugs can be given to help blood pressure, but those drugs can sometimes affect the kidneys temporarily. Usually the kidneys can recover.”
Dr. Ramin goes on to say “a healthy person like Lamar should regain function normal kidney function and get off dialysis, so he won’t be on dialysis for the rest of his life.”
But Lamar may not have been as healthy as Dr. Ramin and HollywoodLife think. There had been whispers — which Odom’s refuted — and reports of drug abuse long before Lamar fell into a coma after taking a dangerous mixture of herbal sex supplements, cocaine and alcohol.
Regardless of what might happen to Lamar’s kidneys, he’s no longer on the verge of death, like it seemed at times last week. That’s at least one positive note in this whole ordeal.
(Via TMZ)
