Nephrology

I got up yesterday and went to Mac to get my Thursday blood draw. The phlebotomist had drawn me a couple of times while I was in the hospital, so she wasn't surprised at how difficult I am to bleed. After a couple of attempts to get my veins, she settled for a finger stick. For a basic metabolic profile (BMP), a finger stick is not ideal because it misrepresents the sodium and potassium levels -- you get more of both because of the "tissue damage" of squeezing the finger repeatedly to get 1-2 cc of blood. I came out with a bright yellow circus bandaid, though. That was groovy.

After that we made a quick stop at the pharmacy to pick up the nausea medicine Dr. P had called in for me the day before, then we were off to Hutch to meet with the nephrologist. He called me in thirty minutes after my appointment time, but he was very apologetic and explained that he had squeezed me in at the tail-end of his appointment day in Hutch (his practice is in Wichita) after receiving the call from Dr. P on Tuesday. I was lucky to be able to see him so soon. The only two problems were that (1) we were on a tight schedule because Mom worked yesterday, and (2) I was starving. After calling Mac hospital to fax all my labs and stuff (which they did EXTREMELY promptly, much to his surprise), Dr. C looked over everything and admitted to being perplexed. He thinks a couple of things might be happening. First, he thinks my excessively large bladder means that my urine is sitting too long and so the acidity is following Fick's Law and moving from the area of its higher concentration (in my bladder) to an area of lower concentration (into my bloodstream). He also thinks the remaining kidney stone is not allowing that kidney to properly pull acidity from my blood and put it in the urine. So, I am to try to pee more frequently and take two sodium bicarbonate tablets a day.

Dr. C also thinks that I have a low-grade, persistent UTI due to the stone as well. Thus he put me on ten days of Levaquin followed by thirty days of Bactram. Yoplait is going to LOVE me for the next month, considering I already had the start of a yeast infection from the IV antibiotics they gave me in the hospital. I was so wanting yogurt that last night I had a dream I went to buy some and it was all out of date. SERIOUSLY out of date. Like the date on one container read Feb. 27, 1920. When I pointed this out to the sales associate, he looked at the container and then me and asked, "Are you SURE it's not still good???"