1. Starting somewhere around 4 a.m. this morning, a dull pain in my right lower leg kept me from sleeping. I tried a heating pad, walking around, and sitting up. The discomfort persisted. Around 9:00 or so, I fell asleep again, thankfully, and when I woke up the discomfort had disappeared and didn't return all day long, thankfully.
2. Tacrolimus is the drug I take to prevent my immune system from rejecting my new kidney. Thursday afternoon, the day after I had blood work done in CdA, my Tacrolimus results came back and they were low -- in other words, I thought, given what I've learned about this medicine, I should have more of the drug in my bloodstream. I decided that if I didn't hear from Dr. Bieber by about 5 o'clock or so, that I would send him a note through MyChart.
I did that.
I was then very happy that today, around 1:00, Dr. Bieber thanked me for reaching out to him and did, indeed, elevate my dosage a bit.
This development helped me a lot.
Dr. Bieber, as I thought he would, appreciated me being proactive.
It's a different situation at Kootenai Health than at the Transplant Center at Sacred Heart.
At Sacred Heart, I was under the care of several transplant nephrologists at the same time and had a nurse coordinator assigned to me.
Dr. Bieber is on his own with me at Kootenai Health and is treating a variety of patients, not just transplant recipients.
His response time is bound to be a bit slower than, say, Nurse Jenn's at Sacred Heart, but it is a great help that he welcomes it when I initiate questions and concerns.
I'll have labs drawn again the week of March 31 and we'll find out if the increased dosage raises the Tacrolimus in my blood to where we want it and I have an appointment to visit Dr. Bieber on April 10th.
I return to the Sacred Heart clinic on May 12th for my first annual check up and to celebrate 🎂 🤣 my one year anniversary of the transplant itself. (The surgery was May 11, 2024.)
I'm happy and satisfied with how my switch back to Dr. Bieber is working out.
3. So now Copper takes one pill every twelve hours to help slow down his thyroid action.
To get around having to put the pill down Copper's hatch myself, I decided to try crushing the pill into powder and sprinkling it onto and working it into his wet food.
It's working!
Copper loves being fed wet food twice a day and he eats his food as if the medicine isn't there.
This development might make me more happy than the fact that Dr. Bieber welcomes my reaching out to him with my kidney concerns!
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