I don’t often share here but for those who do follow this site I am sharing the following.
I have waited on this because I want to be clearer before sharing here and I would rather not share ‘bad news’ as we all have so much with which to deal ourselves which is hard enough, but it is helpful nonetheless to me and to friends for me to share: tests results and an extended consultation with a nephrologist confirm I have a kidney disease which eventually is going to require some elaborate and aggressive treatment. FSGS, IGS, membranous, minimal change, and MPGN are all among the possibilities as well as other glomerular diseases. It is most likely I will need a kidney biopsy within a month or so to begin to precisely identify which disease this is and what treatment is most appropriate. In the meantime I continue to undergo more blood and urine tests (I can never recall giving up as many vials of blood as were taken from me as yesterday) and I am on a high power prescription diuretic to reduce the ‘severe’ edema (Dr. Khan, my nephrologist, identified this as ‘severe’) in my ankles and legs, which is a medication that also has its attendant potentially serious side effects. As always Mayo is being very slow, careful, and deliberate, which is good, but even as I greatly appreciate Dr. Khan taking considerable time to describe the biopsy procedure with me and the various probabilities of various problematic consequences following it in extremely meticulous detail I am ready to move forward and do what needs to be done. As I told him, I want to address this and begin to do so as soon as possible. I have researched all these possible diseases now and recognize they are all potentially seriously life-changing, especially long-term, but I am ready to do all of what needs to be done to live the best possible life I can for as long as I possibly can. I alternate emotionally, and have since this ‘new health issue’ first emerged in early to mid August, between feeling down about it, very sad, and feeling focused, calm and determined. I wish this had not emerged as it has because I have enjoyed teaching all of my classes, we are doing valuable work together, and I feel as if I am as good as I ever have been, in my teaching, if not better, but it’s been hard for me to do much scholarship or institutional service at the same time, and it feels strange not to be contributing yet more and more actively to the greater community where I work. But weakness and fatigue are major results of this kind of kidney disease, so that limits me and that’s why I am as eager and even impatient to move forward to full treatment as I am. Perhaps by next spring semester, before the semester starts, a full treatment regimen will be in place for the precise kidney disease I have and which it seems I will almost certainly continue to have for the rest of my life. I hope so. To conclude, I am very grateful I do have the access to the medical care I have and I have confidence in my health care practitioners’ expertise and dedication even if I wish they weren’t so swamped with such extensive demand and need from so, so many. I greatly admire doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals for doing such tremendously valuable work and for working so hard at it.
Andy and I are trying to maintain a positive outlook despite the challenges present and to come. For example we both enjoyed me sharing the exceedingly elaborate and detailed clinical notes from Dr. Khan on my patient portal where it indicates repeatedly ‘patient denies any history of ’. Given how much crime fiction we watch it’s funny the connotations that come to mind with ‘Mr Nowlan denied any history of vaping’ for example as if ‘despite the suspect’s denial we have reason to distrust his testimony’ as ‘witnesses report evidence of Mr Nowlan vaping on ’. 🙂 It is a convention of this kind of clinical document but ‘denies’/‘denied’ in this context still seems amusing to us.