Surprisingly, the labs I got for my cardiac ablation procedure tomorrow showed up in the St. Joseph online portal, even though I had the labs done at St. Jude Hospital in Fullerton. I guess since they’re part of the same hospital network (Providence), all the labs show up together. Anyway, I tested negative again for COVID-19. This time, they swabbed both nostrils and held the swab for 5 seconds on each side. Ouch.
I also had a basic metabolic panel and CBC w/differential done. The surprising item was my creatinine levels. It’s still really high but the result came back at 4.9 mg/dL, which corresponds to a eGFR of 13. The last time my creatinine was that low was back in 2016, a year before I started dialysis. Here is some ancient history:
| Test Date | Creatinine (mg/dL) | eGFR |
| 3/25/2015 | 1.84 | 43 |
| 4/29/2015 | 2.0 | 39 |
| 6/3/2015 | 2.7 | 27 |
| 7/6/2015 | 2.52 | 29 |
| 8/9/2015 | 3.42 | 20 |
| 8/14/2015 | 3.65 | 19 |
| 8/24/2015 | 2.74 | 26 |
| 10/19/2015 | 3.08 | 23 |
| 11/9/2015 | 3.13 | 22 |
| 1/11/2016 | 3.26 | 21 |
| 2/14/2016 | 3.32 | 21 |
| 5/17/2016 | 4.5 | 14 |
| 7/8/2016 | 4.72 | 14 |
| 8/18/2016 | 5.09 | 12 |
| 8/28/2016 | 5.04 | 13 |
| 9/29/2016 | 5.55 | 11 |
Yeah, I was basically getting labs done monthly or more. It was about this time in mid-2016 that I started the transplant listing process at St. Joseph, then transferred to UCLA.
I’m not sure what the numbers represent for the latest test. If I was still at 13 eGFR, I could probably stay off dialysis but since my urine output is basically still zero, I won’t be able to get rid of excess fluids. I also don’t know if the readings are a measurement of dialysis effectiveness, though most of my recent readings have been in the 5-9 range. I think I asked the nephrologist how I would know if my kidneys healed themselves and the feeling I got was that it never happens for chronic kidney failure.
Life with chronic diseases 