Liver....

I touched briefly on Babygirl's lab results yesterday in the middle of my self-centered rant.  But since this blog is ostensibly about HER, I figured I'd best fill you all in.

Her kidney is very happy, holding to a creatinine of 0.8, even when she was sick last month.  She remains anemic despite the fact that her new kidney should be producing adequate amounts of erythropoetin.  I suspect that she may have been anemic before she developed kidney disease.  We never checked, so we'll never know.

But her liver is not happy.  She had some liver function elevations immediately after her transplant, with some numbers running as much as 15 times normal.  This is not as severe.  She has a couple of tests running about three times normal, but since they've been ENTIRELY normal since shortly after transplant, it's not a good thing. 

The theory is that she is taking so much Tylenol (about a hundred 500 mg tablets every month) that her liver can't quite tolerate it.  We've been instructed to get the 325 mg tablets (harder to find but our pharmacy is putting some aside for us) and to try to not have her take even those as much.  So now what are we to do for the headaches?  They had no suggestions.

They gave her new medications for the nausea that comes from the headaches since the one she was using was helping with neither the headaches nor the nausea.  She's lost six pounds since her hospital stay three weeks ago.  The steroid-induced weight needed to come down, for sure, but having her so nauseated that she can't eat for a month wouldn't have been my first plan for weight management.

They want to recheck her in a month. But since neurology wanted to see her in mid-January, that's when we'll likely go back.  Since they area already moving at the speed of snails to fix her headaches, I'd hate to miss an appointment.

We haven't managed a full month with no travel yet.

DeeDee