Brief Answer:
About your potassium

Detailed Answer:
Hello and welcome,

It does sound like you you are going through a lot right now, but the potassium problem may not be a difficult one to sort out.

Hydrochlorothiazide is a blood pressure medicine that increases urination. Increased urination causes a loss of potassium. Usually when I prescribe hydrochlorothizide, I prescribe it as a pill that also contains triamterene ("Triamterene Hydrochlorothiazide) as this helps retain the potassium. It won't decrease the urination but will help retain the potassium.

Taking potassium 1x/day may be getting washed out with the frequent urination and not last long enough. You may need to take either a sustained release formulation of it such as K-Dur, or take it a couple of times per day. This depends on how low your potassium is and needs to be discussed with the doctor who is on call for your primary doctor.

While slightly low potassium usually isn't an immediate problem, very low potassium can cause an arrhythmia (irregular heart beat) and that's not good.

Your surgery is nearly a week off so there is still plenty of time to correct this problem.

I'd also cut down on caffeine as that is a diuretic (increases urination) too. So if your tea is caffeinated, change to something else.

So the thing to do now is to call the doctor on call for your primary and discuss increasing the dose of the potassium supplement and a sustained release formula, or switching to hydrochlorothiazide pills that also have triamterene in it (if your current formulation doesn't include this). If possible, have the most recent potassium result handy when you call the doctor on call. You can usually get the phone number for this person by calling the number for your doctor who may have an answering service for when he/she isn't there and will direct you to the dr. on call.

I hope this information helps. Please let me know if I can provide further information or clarification.

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