Sunday, May 25, 2014

Re-listing

Hello again, loyal readers. It has been much longer than usual between posts, and I don't have any good excuse for not posting. Maybe I just got a temporary case of writer's block. But no need to worry, everyone is fine here.

Today's post will be an update on Mom, and I plan on resuming the article reviews in the next post. We finally have some good news regarding her kidney transplant status. We found out on May 13 that Mom was approved for returning to the waiting list for a kidney transplant on Friday, May 9. The wait for that news took almost two months longer than expected, but at least Mom was still accruing time on the wait list because she was initially approved for a kidney transplant (living donor only) in August of 2012. So now it is a waiting game. Based on the statistics for this transplant center, her wait time going forward may be about a year. But she did agree to receiving a kidney from an extended criteria donor, which is a donor who is older or possibly had some hypertension. It is still a good kidney for transplant but is not considered to be among the very best. In theory that should shorten her wait time.

In the previous update I also mentioned some GI issues Mom was having that were causing some blood loss. Her hemoglobin had also been dropping, likely as a result of the blood loss. Her nephrologist was getting concerned that she might need a blood transfusion if it got too low, so they were watching her hemoglobin very closely. This drop in hemoglobin was likely contributing to her feeling even more tired than normal on the days she has dialysis. Since then she has seen a gastroenterologist and had a colonoscopy and an endoscopy. Some issues were found (nothing serious) and the blood loss seems to be under control now. Her most recent hemoglobin reading was 9.4 (normal is 10 or above), so that appears to be headed in the right direction.

That's all for now. Next up is a review of an article that mentions a milestone in the treatment of fibrinogen amyloidosis.

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