Yo. It's a kidney. Lay off the coffee.

  You know how someone tells you something and you waste countless hours dwelling upon it until it departs reality to become full-blown paranoia? That's me right now.

Yo. It's a kidney.

My primary care physician's nurse-o-the-week called Friday morning. It was weird. "We got your lab results back and Doctor wanted me to tell you that you have borderline kidney failure. She wants you to eat more protein and don't drink coffee." End of call.

I shit you not. Who does that? Who tells a patient something that will scare the blessed fuck out of them and not tell them to make an appointment. Did she use the wrong words? Did she mean "disease" and not "failure"? Does the pain in my back belong to my kidney and not my fucked-up spine? Did I pee today? Was it brown? Should I visit my nephrologist? Is it because of Lupus? We're still trying to find a rheumatologist that takes my insurance... well, one that's even in this area. The old one retired a year ago.

So I do what any stupid person would do: assume the worst. 

When I die, who will take care of Better Half and my mom? And my dogs? Is it illegal to dump the other dogs' ashes with mine? I want to be dumped in woodland, after all. Hmm. We could  save a lot of time and expense if someone would just whack me over the head and bury me near the world's tallest thermometer.  Hershey could eat it.

Kidding aside, I have more questions than answers. I can only speculate until I see the endocrinologist on Monday. I'll get her opinion on the whole mess, and also set up an appointment with the kidney doc.

Researching on my own isn't doing any good.

Lupus nephritis (nef-RYE-tis) is the medical name for kidney swelling and irritation that is caused by lupus. Lupus is an autoimmune disease. Autoimmune diseases cause your immune system to attack your own healthy cells. When your immune system attacks your kidneys, they get damaged. The damage can be very serious.

Well, duh.

The most severe kind of lupus nephritis is proliferative nephritis, which causes scars on the kidneys. To prevent this from happening, your health care provider might want you to take a medicine called an immune suppressant. This type of medicine weakens your immune system so that it can’t harm your kidneys as much.

It goes without saying that these medicines weaken the entire immune system. Not very nice considering the pandemic and all.

Chronic kidney disease that gets worse and causes the kidneys to stop working is called kidney failure or end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Between 1 and 3 out of every 10 people with lupus nephritis eventually get kidney failure/ESRD.

Between 1 and 3 out of every 10? Maybe I'm tired, but that looks weird. Does that mean 2 out of 10, which would be 1 out of 5? [insert sarcastic grunt] 

That information comes from the American Kidney Fund. Not a bad organization.

Now let's back it up a bit to focus on the real issue here: avoid coffee.

What? Have you seen my blog graphics? The theme? L'essence du café? I suppose she'll tell me to lay off opossum memes as well. I'm already a carnivore so increasing protein is heavenly for me.

Alright, that's not the main issue. The problem rests in "failure" vs "disease". 

We already know I have kidney disease. There's nothing borderline about it. The stones were a giveaway, as is the constant discomfort in the area where the kidneys rest. 

I'm at a loss for what I can do. Do I flip back to my kidney stone diet? Do I take on a new diet to stave off kidney failure (which doesn't work for kidney disease or with my other meds)? I'm at the point of just doing a 24-hour purge, consuming only water, broth, Ensure, and maybe some raw carrots and cabbage for fiber.

I really don't have answers. My lab results were on par with prior data. My carbon dioxide (enzymatic) was high at 33 MMOL/L. My GFR was low at 59. Calcium was low at 7.7. Oh, and the quantitative thyroglobulin is low again.

What I'm not understanding is the BUN/Creatinine Ratio being 19.1 - within norms. The actual BUN (blood urea nitrogen) was high at 19 MG/DL. 

My confusion is likely due to the sleeping pill I took an hour ago. It's finally hitting my brain.

Better Half and I will figure this out together. Until we have more answers, we'll take it one day at a time. This method has worked well for us, and is a lot less stressful than dwelling on shit for days.

_________________

UPDATE: My endocrinologist thinks the nurse is a moron. There's nothing in my lab work that would indicate a diagnosis of "borderline kidney failure". It leaves me a bit confused, still.