Thursday, December 27, 2012

September 2012 - Doing the anemia limbo

This post covers the second half of September 2012.

September 22, 2012: Marqueta (potential kidney donor) told Mom her doctor has changed her medication to take her off the anti-inflammation medicine that meant she couldn’t be considered as a living kidney donor. If that goes well she’s planning on applying again in about a month. We're keeping our fingers crossed on that.


September 28: Mom has had little to no energy lately, much like she was in August when she was very low on iron (anemic)  and needed a Procrit shot. She’s in sort of a limbo situation right now since she has not started peritoneal dialysis. She’s not really under the care of the doctor at the PD clinic yet (Dr. S), nor is she officially under the care of her original nephrologist, Dr. V. She finally had some bloodwork done yesterday (Thursday, September 27) and they said her hemoglobin level was at 8, so they gave her a Procrit shot. (I think she’s supposed to get a Procrit shot whenever it’s below 10.) She went down to Austin after that since she didn’t feel like doing anything at home anyway, and Dr. S from the PD clinic called her today and said she definitely needed a Procrit shot because the lab work shows her hemoglobin at 7. (Apparently the lab work is more accurate than the test they do on the spot in the doctor’s office.) He said she needs to have two shots per week and have it tested weekly going forward until they get things under control. He also said it will take several weeks to bring her hemoglobin back up, and it won’t do any good to give her more than two shots per week. It’s really frustrating that they let her hemoglobin get that low, with her feeling so bad for so many days. Hopefully she’ll be more closely monitored once she starts the dialysis training again next week.

September 29: Today I finally published my first post on this blog. Better late than never, as they say.

No comments:

Post a Comment