Thursday, January 8, 2009

Day 22: A good hospital visit, at last!

Oh, I had such a good visit at the hospital today. There's something so gratifying about seeing a doctor you've seen before. Until now, I've seen so many different doctors - each one of them looking only at my chart for information. It can be frustrating. But today was liberating.

It was great to have confirmation that, due to my being a relatively young kidney transplant recipient, I am on a higher regime of drugs and therefore subject to more side effects and a much more complex system of drug self-administration. I have been feeling overwhelmed. All I needed was the recognition that it is indeed difficult.

The fact that I am able to care for myself to a large extent has resulted in the hospital designating the insulin shots to me - whereas, he said, with people who can't or won't do it, the glucose is largely left to its own devices for the relatively short duration of the high steroids. But that's a month's worth of toxicity. After all I've strived for, I just don't want that. I'm glad I can do things myself and it made me really take pride in the whole situation - something that always saves me in these crazy times.

One of my prednisone tablets (a strong corticosteroid that makes my blood sugar levels really high) was dropped today. Now I'm on 10mg per day instead of 15mg yesterday and 20mg a week ago. It's already alleviated the blood sugar levels - I have given myself no insulin injections yet today and my glucose levels have been fairly stable. And after the 27th of January, I will go down again to 5mg per day. I think it might work out after all that I won't need insulin, only tablets to help. Very exciting!

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