Life is always different when you look at it from Santa Fe. The clear air gives clarity to thought raising questions like, "What did I do in a previous life that means I live in Dallas rather than Santa Fe." Ok, ok. maybe it was something done or not done previously in this life, but that gets depressing real quick.
And BK Virus is not quite so depressing as it was a week ago. Life is really not any different. I don't feel different. I did find a blog that helped quite a bit. You'll find a link to it just to the right of this post. Chronic Positivity - Life with Polycystic Kidney Disease. Jeff is a nurse, his writing gets a little involved with lab numbers and such, but his judgement is sound. He battled PKD for a number of years and is two years post-transplant. He was diagnosed with BKV last summer and has been treating it for the last year and is now hopefully on a final round of antiviral.
I gained two things from Jeff's blog. The first is the surprising efficacy of Ciproflaxcin as an antiviral. It really knocked down the cell count of the virus. I'm going into the seventh day of treatment, Blood samples will be drawn next week and we'll have results a few days after that.
The second thing was that his clinic tests for BK Virus without waiting for symptoms. His creatinine level was 1.1. upon discovery, with the normal range of kidney function. Mine was 2.2, high, not alarming, but definitely showing a decrease in kidney function. My current feeling is that I would rather have been able to begin treatment earlier. I'll discuss this with Dr. Nesser on the next appointment and report in my next post.
Until then, I'm on vacation in Santa Fe and heading for the slick rock canyons of Utah and then on to the Great Salt Lake. Right now it's lunchtime and I'm thinking about a bowl of green chili stew.
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