Wednesday lab day.
My hemoglobin was right at 10 so I got to skip the Aranesp shot for the first time in forever. I just looked it up, and the last time my hemoglobin was at 10 or more was three months ago.
The big news is that my creatinine was down to 1.2! ONE POINT TWO. I still can’t believe it. That’s … normal. Like, normal normal. Wow. And this brought my GFR up to 51. Holy crap.
My blood pressure, on the other hand, was still high. I had put myself back on 40 mg of lisinopril in addition to the metoprolol hoping that would bring it back down but nope. Granted, I hadn’t been on the lisinopril that long by that time but I was still hoping it would drop. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been so perplexed why my previous BP medication regimen isn’t working. I just read up a bit more on Kyprolis, and one of the potential side effects is high blood pressure. I wasn’t aware of this.
I’ve just decided I’m going to mess around with my own blood pressure meds and figure out what works. This may not be the most ideal way to go about this, but I just want to avoid what I went through last summer with the doc (the other doc, the one in PA) changing my BP meds every few days. So, I’m keeping very good tabs in my calendar of when I’ve started what. Yesterday I added back in the nifedipine, and lo and behold, my BP today was 123/75, a far cry from the 150s/90s it’s been. I’m going to stay on this for a week, and if it continues to stay low/normal, I’ll cut back on the lisinopril. If it’s still good, I’m going to slowly cut back on the metoprolol. I’ve long felt that that particular medication just doesn’t work for me. The flip side to all of this is making sure the creatinine stays low and that I’m not adding anything into the mix to jeopardize that.
My blood sugar is still high but I’m not even counting that in my “two out of three” at this point. There’s nothing that can be done about it until I get on meds, and that likely won’t happen until I see my PCP in October. I believe it was two weeks ago that I looked more closely at the Kyprolis bag and noticed “+ dextrose” on the label. (Dextrose = sugar, for those not in the know. And I didn’t know until right this second that it’s chemically identical to glucose, or blood sugar. Man, I’m learning a lot.) More reading on the side effects indicated that yep, Kyprolis can raise blood sugar. Makes sense now, huh? So between that and the dexamethasone, it is what it is. I’ve been much more consistent about checking my blood sugar in the morning, and it’s been really interesting to see the cyclical nature of it. Thursday, the day after the infusion and the dexamethasone, my blood sugar is well into the 200s. Then it drops about 10 – 25 points a day back down to the low/mid 100s until the following Thursday when it jumps back up again. I wonder if maybe insulin would be the easiest way to treat this since the dose can be adjusted easily depending on what the blood sugar is at a given time. Certainly not my first choice, but I just wonder.
The poor nurse had a hell of a time getting that IV in me this week. She started first on the right hand. She said the needle went in but… blah blah blah… something I didn’t catch but whatever it was, it wasn’t going to work. So then she tried the left hand. Same situation. She felt really bad, and she said I was going to be pretty bruised up. Eh, whatever. I guess it just happens sometimes. I thought about it after the fact, and I wonder if I didn’t drink as much water Wednesday as I normally do. I was working at a nursing home, and it was just pretty busy since I had to get out of there shortly after noon to make the lab appointment. Maybe I just wasn’t hydrated enough. I’ll keep an eye on more closely next time. Anyway, she asked another nurse to start the IV, and she did it on the underneath side of my arm with little difficulty. But that one tends to leave a good bruise too. So I’m going to be very colorful here shortly.
Next week is my off week. Back to the lab on August 18th.
Hemoglobin: 10
Creatinine: 1.2
eGFR: 51
Low, Low, Low 