Me and my journey through kidney disease . . . .

It has been over a fortnight since I have updated my blog as nothing has happened which was worthy of note!!  However, this week it has all "kicked off"!! On Tuesday morning I went for my usual blood extraction ready for my appointment with my consultant on Thursday.  I have been feeling fairly well for the last week so I was not concerned with my results at all, especially as they seem to have stabilised over the last two months. However, on Thursday morning I logged onto the Renal Patient View to discover that my kidney function had reduced to 5% You may think well that's only a 1% but for me this is actually a 16% reduction in my kidney function!! I instantly knew what this would mean for me.  My consultant was constantly worrying about me not being on dialysis at 6% so that deterioration would mean dialysis. At my outpatients appointment it transpired that my blood pressure had also increased substantially, no surprise I thought with the shock I had received ...

Now then, I have to say that yesterday was a very long day waiting for the phone to ring!!  In the end, I called the hospital at 12:00 as I could not wait any longer, this is a case of life or dialysis you know!! Well, at that point it was still inconclusive!  What I did know though is that Mum has 51% in her right kidney and 49% in the left.  This is a good thing as if Mum had one kidney working well and the other not, the operation could not go ahead.  I suppose I ought to have the left though as I also have my 6%!!  The hospital also confirmed that Mum had a kidney function using the normal tests in excess of 90% which is great. However, the surgeon still had to review the results of the CT Scan and the more stringent kidney tests before an answer could be given to me.  I have to say, this is now beginning to do my head in!! Today I had a call from the hospital to say that one of the tests mum had was inconclusive and needed to be done...

Well, what a full on two days they were!!  Mum and I left Helston on Tuesday at 8:30 and made our way up to Derriford.  Our first appointment was in the Renal outpatients department.  It was here that Mum and I had blood taken for the cross matching.  This is where a negative result is a good thing!!   From here on all the tests performed were on Mum as the two days only aim is to ensure that Mum would not be detrimentally affected if she were to donate one of her kidneys to me. Firstly we made our way to the Nuclear Medicine department where mum was to have an Isotope Renogram and blood tests which will test how well her kidneys are working. Mum was injected with three drugs, the first one to make the kidneys work harder, the second so they could be seen on the renogram and the third to see how quickly the kidneys clear.  Mum was then placed between two plates which were a gamma camera.  Slowly as the injected drugs began t...