89) New Blood Work Report

January 11, 2007
Thursday

El Milagro: Got my most recent blood work report from Jennifer the Dietician today. J the D reported the good aspects of my blood work first (good Solution-Focused girl that she is): Albumin protein stores and protein intake are good; red blood cell count is good; and iron saturation and stored iron are both good. Although it looks like the Sensipar is helping take down my PTH (parathyroid hormone; see Post # 10 in May), it is still in the high category at 308 (should be 150 – 300). Also, this time my Potassium is high again at 6.1 (over 5.5 is bad), and my Phosphorous is still high at 7.1 (over 5.5 is bad).

Jennifer the Dietician quizzed me on my recent food intake for the day or so before the blood work and we couldn’t come up with anything that indicated why these numbers should remain so high. All the key high potassium / high phosphorous foods are not being ingested by this guy… although I must admit that I did eat some leftover turkey enchiladas on the night after my blood work. Hey! Those are the first enchiladas since the enchilada boycott began and there is absolutely no way to say “No!” to turkey enchiladas made from leftover turkey from our New Year’s feast. I just couldn’t do that. But, I only ate about four of them… with green chile rice and sour cream… yum yum.

So, J the D is gonna talk to Dr. Moritz about experimenting with a different combination of binders cause she thinks I’m taking a lot of binders for my results to be so poor. And so it goes.

I was also a bit fuzzed out today. I forgot my dialysis bag so I didn't have all the stuff one needs at the dialysis center, like my blanket, Shayna's pocket radio, my TV clicker, and my TV earphones. I had to sit there and freeze myself for four hours. It was like doing a strange sort of penance in honor of the terrible news I heard just before coming over here.

I had just heard earlier about the death of one of my favorite teachers and mentors. I don't like being mysterious, but was asked not to mention who it is yet, since her death hasn’t been made public yet… but I can tell you that the world has lost one of the most beloved, compassionate, curious, extraordinary, and cool people I have ever met. There’ll be more on this later.

People come and go in this universe and some are like shooting stars and some are like supernova and some are like black holes. I think that the more we study about the vagaries of the universe the more we can understand our place and the impact individuals can have on the flow of the universe of consciousness. I have no idea what this means… it just came out and somehow seemed like the right thing to say just now.

Notes: In at 75.0 and out at 72.1 Kgs.