I'm sorry I've gotten behind on my posts. My intention was to put out some new Yule blog posts this year but my health kept that from happening. Those of you who have followed me for a while know that I have some chronic health problems and from time to time they put me out of commission. I feel kind of weird writing a blog this personal as I usually try to be more informative than personal in my blogs but I wanted to let everyone know what's up.
About nine weeks ago now I started swelling and having rapid weight gain. And by rapid I mean 16lbs. in eight days, that was just to start. To date I've gained over 50lbs. in about an 8 week period. My doctor prescribed lasix to try to bring down the edema but I only continued to gain weight. Finally I was feeling really horrible, my gut was telling me that I really needed to be seen and have some tests run, and I couldn't get a hold of my dr so I went to the local Urgent Care. They took one look at me and called the ER to tell them they were sending me over. There they discovered that my kidneys were failing. Because of my diabetes and my lupus they didn't want to treat me there because they felt I needed more than the local hospital could provide so I was whisked off to "the big city." In Pittsburgh I had a renal biopsy, not something I care to do again though it wasn't as bad as I imagined.
Finally they deemed me stable enough to return home for treatment. I saw the renal doctor yesterday and all of the biopsy results are back showing that I have something called Minimal Change Disease, a type of kidney failure completely independent from my diabetes and lupus. Thankfully I listened to my gut and went to urgent care that day. Left untreated MCD is fatal.
The treatment is no picnic, it calls for high dose steroids with lots of side effects. It will cause my diabetes to become badly uncontrolled, weight gain, intense joint pain, emotional disturbances, possible suicidal tendencies, and possible cataracts to name a few. I look at it this way though, at least it's not dialysis or a kidney transplant. The goal is to stay on the treatment for eight to twelve weeks but that may or may not be possible given the severity of the side effects. I will always have MCD but the goal is to get it into remission. The longer I can stay on the treatment the studies show the less likely I am to have relapses. There is the chance that the MCD could develop into a more severe case of renal failure in the future but only time will tell. When I was in the hospital I was down to only about ten percent of my kidney function. Now I'm siting at about 30 percent.
I started my treatment yesterday and my doctor says I should start to see improvement in my renal symptoms in about a week. Hopefully then I'll start to feel up to posting again.