Brace for impact
"People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when knowledge is so damn frightening."
-Laurel K. Hamilton
Had an appointment with the primary care and she glanced over the x-ray and ekg and signed off on the renal biopsy. I guess that means that there wasn't anything heinously wrong with either, which is sort of a relief. This means that the biopsy will go forward on Monday. I'll have to be fully sedated for it because of the sleep apnea and while it's sort of a bother, it's just as well. No anxiety about the procedure now and they can stab me like a pin cushion and it's not like I'm going to know. There's always a chance something terrible happens, and the tech/nurse walking me through it made sure to mention some of the fubars, but the odds are quite slim. They apparently have a pathologist in the room with them when they're doing it so he/she can immediately look at the sample and see if it's enough and of usable quality. That's good since I'm pretty sure the last thing I want is to have to do this repeatedly.
After that, it'll be the waiting and see just how fucked I am from seriously fucked to totally fucked. You know you're in a bad situation when all your possible outcomes only manage to range between those two options. I guess the plus side is at least at that point we'll know how things stand and if nothing else, planning becomes possible. Right now everything is just in a holding pattern. When I dwell on it it feels like you're watching an hourglass bleed sand without any way to stem the flow. All you know is it's going to run out of sand and probably sooner than later. Usually I'm thinking about kidney function but it's really not much different with lifespan. They'll end up going hand in hand and right now, there's nothing to do about the flow.
I'm still keeping to the diet. I started to worry I was doing too much additional damage with the whole almost completely not eating so I've added some food back into the mix. This might be suprising to a lot of people but eating some actually makes it harder on me from an emotional standpoint than not eating at all. I can tolerate the latter but constantly having to ride the brake takes an emotional toll. I ate the most amount of food today that I've had in 3 weeks and it consisted of:
1 3" by 4" slab of Shelley's Mexican Lasagna
2 pieces of white bread
1 chicken thigh
2 small nuggets of salmon
10 baby carrots
20 sunflower seeds
Added all up it seems like it should be less than 1000 calories, which I figure is my upper limit, but it still felt like too much and it was a struggle. If I just ate nothing it would have been easy peasy. I'll see if I can keep walking this tightrope but I really don't know. It just generally feels terrible. If I wasn't worried I'd screw things up even worse than they'd already are, I swear I'd just starve myself for the rest of this month and see at the end how things looked.
-Laurel K. Hamilton
Had an appointment with the primary care and she glanced over the x-ray and ekg and signed off on the renal biopsy. I guess that means that there wasn't anything heinously wrong with either, which is sort of a relief. This means that the biopsy will go forward on Monday. I'll have to be fully sedated for it because of the sleep apnea and while it's sort of a bother, it's just as well. No anxiety about the procedure now and they can stab me like a pin cushion and it's not like I'm going to know. There's always a chance something terrible happens, and the tech/nurse walking me through it made sure to mention some of the fubars, but the odds are quite slim. They apparently have a pathologist in the room with them when they're doing it so he/she can immediately look at the sample and see if it's enough and of usable quality. That's good since I'm pretty sure the last thing I want is to have to do this repeatedly.
After that, it'll be the waiting and see just how fucked I am from seriously fucked to totally fucked. You know you're in a bad situation when all your possible outcomes only manage to range between those two options. I guess the plus side is at least at that point we'll know how things stand and if nothing else, planning becomes possible. Right now everything is just in a holding pattern. When I dwell on it it feels like you're watching an hourglass bleed sand without any way to stem the flow. All you know is it's going to run out of sand and probably sooner than later. Usually I'm thinking about kidney function but it's really not much different with lifespan. They'll end up going hand in hand and right now, there's nothing to do about the flow.
I'm still keeping to the diet. I started to worry I was doing too much additional damage with the whole almost completely not eating so I've added some food back into the mix. This might be suprising to a lot of people but eating some actually makes it harder on me from an emotional standpoint than not eating at all. I can tolerate the latter but constantly having to ride the brake takes an emotional toll. I ate the most amount of food today that I've had in 3 weeks and it consisted of:
1 3" by 4" slab of Shelley's Mexican Lasagna
2 pieces of white bread
1 chicken thigh
2 small nuggets of salmon
10 baby carrots
20 sunflower seeds
Added all up it seems like it should be less than 1000 calories, which I figure is my upper limit, but it still felt like too much and it was a struggle. If I just ate nothing it would have been easy peasy. I'll see if I can keep walking this tightrope but I really don't know. It just generally feels terrible. If I wasn't worried I'd screw things up even worse than they'd already are, I swear I'd just starve myself for the rest of this month and see at the end how things looked.