I drove up to UPMC yesterday for a dual appointment – one with my surgeon and another one with a hepatologist. The first 60 miles took a little over an hour, but the last 5 miles through the tunnel into Pittsburgh was backed up and took half an hour. Typical big city commute, I guess. I feel fortunate I don’t have to live out a significant portion of my life in a car crawling through traffic.

The surgeon was pretty routine. We have dropped my Prograft a couple of mgs, so it was checking to make sure the blood level was still in a good range. Hopefully this will help with the side effects which have gotten worse with time. I am now on blood pressure medicine and a kind of cortisone that sheds excess potassium. Even though I only see the surgeon once in a while, I have been taking blood tests regularly. It was every two weeks, but I have been on once a weeks for a while since we dropped the level of Prograft. I did get back on the two schedule now, and believe me, that comes around too fast. Once a week is like you are doing it constantly.

My post transplant coordinator gets the test results and calls me if anything is irregular. In the last couple of months, I have been called twice with urgent orders to immediately go to the pharmacy and get this stuff that rids excess potassium in a hurry. If too high, it causes an electrolyte imbalance and you can have a heart attack. Since my rates were constantly high, they finally put me on a regular medicine to keep it low.

For most people, potassium is a good thing. It helps with blood pressure, but for me, the Prograft throws it off so I am on the other end of the scale. The problem is, fresh fruits and vegetables are good sources of potassium, and I have had to drop a lot of them. I will lament about that another time.

The hepatologist was about starting interferon treatment for the Hepatitis C. He says I should start now before the liver starts cirrhosing again. We agreed to wait until after Christmas to start, as the side effects are nasty. Oversimplifying, it is like having the flu for the 48 weeks of treatment. It also makes you very irritable, which is bad for those around you. Aah, gotta love the material world. Just one misery after another, with some interspersed sparse joys. Good thing it isn’t the be all end all.