Kidney Patient Guide

I like a glass or two of wine with a meal. If it's particularly good and I'm in the mood, I'll finish off the bottle. Only once a month or so.

Not had any adverse reactions, except my pre weight will be high if I've drunk a whole bottle.

Patients in my clinic get swabbed for MRSA monthly. When I got a positive one month I was given a decontamination kit and I was told I would be swabbed weekly and had to have six consecutive clears to be allowed out of the isolation cell (yeah, it's like a prison). I didn't use the decontamination k...

Frases to help Phoreigners The farm was used to produce produce. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. We must polish the Polish furniture. Licking lead paint can lead to lead poisoning. The soldier decided to desert his des...

My cholesterol is rocket high but I don't tolerate statins. Eek! Think I'd rather not know! There are a number of statins, all slightly different. I couldn't get on with Simvastatin, but then I tried Atorvastatin and got on OK with it. My cholesterol is now 3.1 / 3.2 all nice & stable. Maybe if...

Two bad days a month? You should be so lucky. I get two bad days a week. And I've no way of forecasting which.

They contain concentrated dialysate. The machine dilutes the concentrate with purified water and bicarbonate is added before it's pumped into the dialyser. In the dialyser your blood is pumped around the inside of the membrane filiaments and the dialysate flows around the outside. The toxins in the ...

You're usually lucky to find out early, before you get symptoms.

Diagnosed in 2003, dialysis from 2010, so 7 years.

I've had an iron infusion before I started dialysis. It took nearly all day, so you should take something to read or watch (I took a DVD player).

I've had repeats during dialysis, added to the line, but there the infusion is far far faster. I don't know why this is so.

Calcium measure in the UK is mmol/litre, not mg/dl as in the USA.

You run the risk of calcification of your arteries with a Ca level of over 2.6 mmol/l (10.4mg/dl)

A Ca of 3 mmol/l or more is serious.

Mine turned out to be inconclusive.

I read somewhere that a third of kidney biopsies that are taken to determine the reason for failure are inconclusive.

Sorry to hear you had such a rough time.

Where do you live ellieshell? It sounds as though it's not the UK.

Yeah, the list of high and low phosphate foods given to me by my dietician says cream cheese is OK. However, it must be full fat cream cheese; fat free has nearly SIX times as much phosphate.

The renal unit I attend three times a week is run by a private company, B Braun Avitum, which is a contractor to Ipswich NHS Trust for renal services (i.e. dialysis). Nephrologists are NHS. I can't fault the quality of care we get. I think the arrangement works very well and it seems to me that if p...

How interesting, cazpi. How about trying the chilli fix by rubbing a chilli on your itchy finger(s) and let us know if it works?

Obviously not if you've scratched your skin so much that you have a sore.

I've heard that capsaicin cream is effective for phosphate itching. I've not tried it myself though.

Capsaisin is the active ingredient of chilli pepper, giving chillis their firey taste.