Magic Pills

I take a total of 35 pills a day. Thank God I can down them all in one. I'm not squeamish like that. It would take up the best part of 30 mins having to swallow them one by one.

My creatinine's at 196 at the moment. Down from 200 a week ago. What an achievement. Not.

The docs put wagers on my Creatinine going down to its 80s as I lay horizontal post the transplant. It was rather a disappointment, and slightly awkward when it then stuck at 100. My norm back then (sigh) was 100-110. Since June and my bout of rejection, I've been on a roller coaster ride of between 140-240, hopes consistently dashed as week after week, while they may suddenly dip by 40 points and make me feel like the Queen of Bloody Everything, they then plummet and I'm back up at 'biopsy land'.

Any kidney person will tell you, though, that, unless you're on the verge of failure (end-stage renal failure), you could be signing yourself up to the Olympics, or booking yourself on a round the world trip the little the signs show. So, like some sort of sick parallel world, you step off the main streets into the warrens of plastic hospitals where you're yet again informed that, yes, you are very ill. These weird numbers rising and falling appear to dictate my life at the moment.

At present, my danger is very low potassium. I tried eating loads of bananas and chocolate (trust me on this one), but it wasn't enough so they added another 4 pills a day to my toxic cocktail. I also can't seem to stay hydrated - the kidney works overtime, especially at night (very convenient...) so I go to bed 56-57 kilos and wake up 52. Despite taking 400mg of Fludrocortisone to combat that, I'm still a leaky cauldron all through the night. Thank god no-one in my close circle of friends/family is a camping fan. If anyone has an answer to this particular problem, I'd love to hear it.

If my results dont go down tomorrow morning, I'm back in for a biopsy. Having just moved to France (and I'll post about the different systems UK-France next), it's all a little up in the air how they're going to handle this procedure. They're talking about a few days in hospital. Perfect timing then - just as my family turn up for Christmas...
Is my rejection back? Did the kidney infection leave some permanent damage? Maybe the rejection this summer never went away? Am I just going to trickle away to a second transplant with no apparent explanation like I did towards the first one? (they've never diagnosed my disease, just saying it's 'lupus-like'..).