I hope posts like this continue to appear, but less and less frequently.
Went to the clinic bright and early this morning for my three month check-up, and everything was great! Cholesterol, sugar, red blood count, potassium, etc etc etc, all normal. Creatinine continues to be out of normal for anyone but me. It was down from last time (3.3 from 3.6) but the 3.6 was up from where it's been over the last year. So, normal for ME!
Note to anyone who has not read the blog. My transplanted kidney was damaged during my struggles with the dreaded BK Virus. Whether the damage is due to inflammation from the virus or from the neurotoxic drugs used to fight the virus is not clear, but whatever, the damage has been done. The good news is that the kidney function has been stable for sometime.
I was to have had the BK serum level checked, but lost my prescription and did not have the test performed. So I will get that taken care of next Monday on my day off. I'll post the results when I have them.
My next checkup will be in four months, that's March. 2013. That will be the day for my annual Glofil test which uses radioactive tracers to get an accurate measure of how well and kidney is clearing toxins.
Happy Holidays to All!!!
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Four More Years!
Four more years of normal life is what I've been blessed with by my kidney transplant.
Four years preceded by two years of dialysis, two years of intermittent ill health and hospital visits, and before that, eight years of declining health following the removal of my first kidney. all due ultimately to Polycystic Kidney Disease.
In the last year before transplant, I finally came to grips with being on an artificial life support system, i.e.: dialysis. In other words, I came to see dialysis as a blessing, not a curse. I was fond of saying that my new birthday should be the day I started dialysis. My old kidneys had failed me and in any other century of mankind I would have been dead. Instead, I had been blessed with two years of machine-assisted living.
That realization came just weeks before my transplant. No one was more supportive of my "new birthday" than the person who was intimately involved with my first birthday, my Mother. Every year on the last day of October, she would send me a birthday card to remember these extra years of precious life.
Until September. She died a peaceful death at home in the arms of her family as hospice helped her struggle to breathe with her cancerous, smoke-damaged lungs.
And I passed through this anniversary of my transplant without giving it a thought.
Four years preceded by two years of dialysis, two years of intermittent ill health and hospital visits, and before that, eight years of declining health following the removal of my first kidney. all due ultimately to Polycystic Kidney Disease.
In the last year before transplant, I finally came to grips with being on an artificial life support system, i.e.: dialysis. In other words, I came to see dialysis as a blessing, not a curse. I was fond of saying that my new birthday should be the day I started dialysis. My old kidneys had failed me and in any other century of mankind I would have been dead. Instead, I had been blessed with two years of machine-assisted living.
That realization came just weeks before my transplant. No one was more supportive of my "new birthday" than the person who was intimately involved with my first birthday, my Mother. Every year on the last day of October, she would send me a birthday card to remember these extra years of precious life.
Until September. She died a peaceful death at home in the arms of her family as hospice helped her struggle to breathe with her cancerous, smoke-damaged lungs.
And I passed through this anniversary of my transplant without giving it a thought.
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