Of course I make plans

and no fruit

Cherry tree in fruit

So of course plans go astray all of the time. Mine went astray when each day I got colder and more fatigued. I had to walk out into the 106 degree summer of Las Vegas to get marginally warm.

Last week I had an appointment at my UMC office and they asked me ten questions about my health, you know the score, have you fallen or gone to the hospital. When they got to fatigued, I said yes. My Transplant Coordinator, who used to be a nurse, stopped and really looked at me.

“How is your thyroid medication doing?” I told her that it was in a good place at this moment. We were lowering the dosage because my kidneys had picked up the slack on the toxins and my thyroid was starting to work. A few years ago I had thyroid cancer (maybe 6 or 7 years now?) and the surgeon Dr. Wang took half of my kidney. I’ve had to be on thyroid medication ever since.

She looked through my labs and then said “What’s this?” I told her that I am sensitive to meds and that sometimes immuno-suppressants (and I guess Valcyte was one of the culprits) could make my RBC’s enlarge making me anemic because large cells meant I had less cells in my body.

That was something they hadn’t had to deal with in the transplant arena. My sister who was dealing with cancer treatments told me that when she went that low, the doctors gave her a blood transfusion.

My WBC’s were also low. Valcyte may have been the culprit there too.

A side note: Please don’t give me advice about taking iron. The interesting thing about my labs is that my iron is way above normal. It was another reason that my doctors were having fits.

They had me take two more Zarxio shots for the immmune system and took me off the Valcyte. Three days later I had labs again. Both my WBC and my RBCs edged upwards. I will see them again next week for labs. I think there was good news because I didn’t get any feedback. That actually drives me crazy, but oh well. I’ll take it as good news.

At this point I still get tired, but not to the same level. Fatigue means that I stagger to the bedroom and barely make it into the bed before I collapse.

So another interesting saga for the Kidney Transplant Journey. With blood being sluggish to the brain, it means I don’t think as well— so no creations even with AI.

On another hand I’m still alive and kicking.