You may have heard the expression, “It’s all in your head.” Today, we’re going there and in the other direction: your feet. More specifically, today’s blog is about your feet, neuropathy, and podiatry. You all know I had pancreatic cancer and chemotherapy helped me survive. Here’s a shocker: chemotherapy is poison. As such, it does damage to different parts of your body in addition to reducing or killing your tumor. But I had just a bit of neuropathy before the chemo. Today, we learn how that happened. Let’s go back to the very beginning of this topic and define neuropathy. The National Kidne ..read more

If you’re tired of reading about climate change, better rethink that opinion. You have chronic kidney disease. Climate change affects CKD. I live in Arizona. Our temperatures the last week or so have gone up as far as 117 degrees. I haven’t seen my backyard in weeks. It’s just too hot to go out. I wanted some kind of scientific definition of climate change that I could understand so I turned to  NASA [Believe it or not]: “Climate change is a long-term change in the average weather patterns that have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates. These changes have a broad ra ..read more

Being chronic kidney disease patients, we take a lot of blood tests. They offer so much information to us and our nephrologists. I hadn’t realized there was a best time to take a blood test until I started fooling around on my computer. I’m in caretaker role today since Bear had surgery yesterday. So, this was my way of escaping my chores and his while he rested. Color me surprised. I try to schedule my own blood tests and Bear’s in the morning since we have to fast beforehand. Figure it this way, if you needed to fast for eight hours – or better yet 12 –you’re going to be one hungry person by ..read more

To me, it was a logical jump from the legal actions for and about kidneys that I wrote about last week to kidney disease research, and then to the clinical trials involved in this research. Of course, the fact that there’s something in the news about the former president’s trials daily helped a bit, too. That’s why today’s blog is about clinical trials. [Nifty thought process here.] The American Kidney Fund devotes a rather long page on their site explaining everything you could ever want to know about clinical trials, although they do not list trials. Other sites do, however. The National Kid ..read more

As a young woman, I was proud to consider myself non-political. I was working toward changes, not to further a political party. As I matured, I began to realize that life is political. There was a strong connection between the changes I sought and the political parties working toward these changes. I have noticed on social media that kidney life is also political. You’ve probably seen these posts yourself: governor so and so of fill-in-the-state has declared (s)he will present the donor bill today. Time for me to grow up and figure out exactly what that means and how it will help the kidney c ..read more

I’ve just discovered that a family member has lupus nephritis. I need to remind myself what that encompasses. Looks like you’re coming on this quest with me this week. Just in case you’ve forgotten what lupus nephritis is, Doctors Health Press is here to help us out: “Lupus Nephritis  Lupus nephritis is inflammation of kidneys caused by the autoimmune disease known as systemic lupus erythematous (SLE)—also called lupus. This is where the body’s immune system targets its own tissues. As many as 60% of lupus patients will later get lupus nephritis. The most common symptoms include dark uri ..read more

One of my buddies texted to tell me that he is taking Ozempic. He had lost 40 pounds and is off insulin. In addition, his kidney numbers are back to normal. It’s having a positive effect on his heart, too. I want these results. I want to take this miracle drug, too. But I can’t. According to Healthline, “’It should be avoided in many populations, including but not limited to people with a history of pancreatitis, people who have had medullary thyroid cancer or who are at increased risk for medullary thyroid cancer,’ Seltzer says.” Seltzer is “Dr. Charlie Seltzer, a Philadephia ..read more

You probably know already, since I’ve mentioned it numerous times, my husband Bear is a veteran. As an older [not old] man, his eGFR has slowly lowered. It’s normal for that to happen. But it got me to thinking about what the Department of Defense’s current attitude toward the kidneys might be since I haven’t written about this in quite a few years. My first attempt at finding out was to hit The Department of Defense’s Medical Standards for Military Service: “i. Absence of one kidney, congenital or acquired. DoDI 6130.03-V1, March 30, 2018 Change 4, November 16, 2022 SECTION 6: DISQUALIFYING ..read more

We have a habit of using the dining room table as our desks when we both want to work yet be together while doing so. But it is our dining room table. That means each time we have company over for dinner, we need to clear the table. Bear brings his papers into his office, and I bring mine into my office. I’ve really slowed down since the pancreatic cancer, so sometimes papers are piled upon the papers I haven’t yet organized from the last time we had dinner guests. Here in the USA, last weekend was Mother’s Day. Hello to my lovely daughter, her husband, and the two little boys. And there goes ..read more

There’s a word banging around in my brain. Although I’ve looked it up several times, I still am not quite sure what it means or how to use it. Why not come along with me for what I’m hoping is the last time of figuring it out? Whoops, forgot to tell you what the word is. It’s amyloidosis. I vaguely thought I remembered it was something on a blood test. I vaguely thought wrong. Okay, let’s go to the experts then. verywellhealth had this information: “ Amyloidosis is sometimes called a protein misfolding disorder, in which misfolded [Gail here: never heard of this before. Have you?] proteins ar ..read more