....none in the icy perfection of the mere stylist.
Well, quite.
Those of you who have followed this from the process of me getting on to the lung transplant list may remember that the final hurdle I had to clear was to prove that my kidneys were not only in good enough to deal with the immediate drug regime post op but also for a lifetime of immunosuppressant drugs, which can cause a bit of damage to them. This was a real struggle as I had a fair bit of damage to all my organs from the radiotherapy I had to kill my bone marrow off back in 2001. After several attempts at what they call the glomerular filtration rate test the team finally said I could go on the list, but it didnt remove the worry about the kidneys.
Now a few weeks back I went for an appointment with a rheumatologist as being on steroids for life can also lead to osteoporosis. A bone density scan suggested I do indeed have a bit of an issue on that front, but it turns out it isn't related to steroids at all but they suspect it is someyhing called kidney bone disease. Turns out the long term effects of the damage to my kidneys (and throwing the dtug cyclosporin into the mix too) has caused enough damagr that my kidneys aren't excreting things properly and this has led to an imbalance of calcium and phosphates and so bones aren't forming correctly. The parathyroid glands that control the balance between these two things may well be malfunctioning too so I have to get a series of blood tests to sort out what is going on.
Also on the topic of long term radiotherapy damage it appears that my eyes have finally fallen foul of it and I am now in what appears to be a fairly rapid onset of cataracts. Just in the last 6 weeks I seem to have gone from almost notmal eyesight to being incredibly light sensitive and having a cloudy halo in front of everything. It is more than a little bit shite I can barely read anything now. You wouldn't believe how long it has taken to compose this, for instance.
I always knew that these things would happen eventually. They do warn you before you get total body irradiation that It's in the post for you but 17 years later I just wasn't expecting it to manifest like this.
The sight thing can be dealt with by having relatively minor surgery I believe (although it will never be approaching what I had) and once we get the full blood tests back we'll know the approach to take for the kidneys but there is no getting away from the fact that these are actual setbacks and it has knocked me a bit.
I've also had a viral thing hanging about for weeks now, which is pissing me off.
Now a few weeks back I went for an appointment with a rheumatologist as being on steroids for life can also lead to osteoporosis. A bone density scan suggested I do indeed have a bit of an issue on that front, but it turns out it isn't related to steroids at all but they suspect it is someyhing called kidney bone disease. Turns out the long term effects of the damage to my kidneys (and throwing the dtug cyclosporin into the mix too) has caused enough damagr that my kidneys aren't excreting things properly and this has led to an imbalance of calcium and phosphates and so bones aren't forming correctly. The parathyroid glands that control the balance between these two things may well be malfunctioning too so I have to get a series of blood tests to sort out what is going on.
Also on the topic of long term radiotherapy damage it appears that my eyes have finally fallen foul of it and I am now in what appears to be a fairly rapid onset of cataracts. Just in the last 6 weeks I seem to have gone from almost notmal eyesight to being incredibly light sensitive and having a cloudy halo in front of everything. It is more than a little bit shite I can barely read anything now. You wouldn't believe how long it has taken to compose this, for instance.
I always knew that these things would happen eventually. They do warn you before you get total body irradiation that It's in the post for you but 17 years later I just wasn't expecting it to manifest like this.
The sight thing can be dealt with by having relatively minor surgery I believe (although it will never be approaching what I had) and once we get the full blood tests back we'll know the approach to take for the kidneys but there is no getting away from the fact that these are actual setbacks and it has knocked me a bit.
I've also had a viral thing hanging about for weeks now, which is pissing me off.
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