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Monday, January 7, 2013

Understanding Kidneys.....Damn, Bad Idea

I've said this before: the thought of having to do dialysis scared the shit out of me. Once when seeing Doc Zoller, I walked through the dialysis center and it was depressing with a capital D.  In my mind, that crossed the line with what I could tolerate. Zoller at one point wanted me to start dialysis and I opted not to.  Now with my kidneys improving, thanks to a reduction in protein produced by the myeloma, dialysis isn't really on the table.

But now that Doc Levine gave me the go ahead to eat some different foods, I decided I should get smarter about the kidneys.  I want to know how they work and what they really do. For the past year and a half I knew that I needed to minimize phosphorus and potassium in my diet. We've done that.  But frankly I didn't understand the whole physiologically of it, if you will.  Levine gave me a book to read called Living Well with Kidney Disease. I've been slowly reading it the past couple of days. And damn is it scary. Dialysis and all that....frightening.  The impact of phosphorus and potassium on  kidney function and the body is huge.  So believe me you, I'm going to be even more of a hawk on what I eat and I'm gonna keep this cancer under control. Those kidneys must work.  

It's kind of like many things. You want to know, but then again you don't want to know.

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Berenson Oncology Success Rate

 Some reading about my myeloma specialist's success rate. A press release and an article from Targeted Oncology.