How do you pull yourself up out of a valley so low that you can not even see light from the sun? Simple, stop looking down in the valley and start looking up.
In this blog I want to talk a little bit about high phosphors, calciphylaxis and what it can do to someone from my point of view. Now, I am no doctor or a nurse, but I do remember what I was told. When you are on dialysis, there is a way that you need to eat to maintain a healthy lifestyle. While there were many things I needed to watch with as a dialysis patient , I especially had to be careful with. Phosphorus and Potassium, if either one of these levels went to high for me. I could get really sick even to the point of death. While my potassium was fine, my phos went up to 9-10, normal range is 3-5. With phos that high there is a good chance that I was going to develop calciphylaxis which is a hardening of the blood vessels if you want to know more about this you can find more information by clicking this link https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/calciphylaxis/symptoms-causes/syc-20370559 .
Knowing that a high phos level could cause some pretty terrible things to happen to me. I took it very seriously. One of the first things I needed to do was to change my diet and go back to being careful like I was when I started.
Here is an interesting thought: my comfortability allowed my carefulness to turn into carelessness. I had gotten comfortable, but the Doctor made me uncomfortable with his prognosis, which had caused me to become once again careful. I know I just went around Robin Hood’s barn, but you get the idea.
That night I started to look very closely at my diet and realized that I had been eating the wrong foods, and right then I changed my thought process of what I was eating. While this did help, I needed extra help and the Doc had prescribed me a medication that would help get the phos down.
There was one drawback: this particular medication was quite pricey. In fact, the last time I tried to pick it up, the pharmacy would not let me take it away without first giving them over $3,000 dollars. That will make the moose lose its antlers, lol. Anyhow, the next day, I called my insurance to see how much they would cover for this medication. When I reached the agent, I asked them how much would they cover? Just a minute, Mr. Reed, let me check. As she was getting the information, my heart started to beat faster, and I was getting ready for the disappointing news. Mr. Reed, for this medication you will owe nothing, it is completely covered. I hit the floor with tears running down my face. You don’t know what this means to me. I said this will save my life. By the end of the conversation, both her and I were in tears. But it was not tears of sorrow, but tears of Joy.
I sometimes wonder where that insurance agent is today. I wonder if she really knows the difference she made in my care, and I wonder if she knows that she did not just impact me, but also those that were around me. Furthermore, I want to say here is you reading this is the one that I talked to that day. Thank you truly helped me that day, and you have forever changed my world and the people around me.
Kidney Trails 