Jacob's Nephrology visit 9.1.11

I am so many blogs behind that I might have to start writing 3 a day to catch up. 

But today's blog is about Jacob's nephrology exam today.  He goes about every 2-3 months and gets blood and urine tests along with a physical exam.

The results are mixed.  Overall, it's good - sorta.

I won't bore you with medical terminology or details but suffice to say that 0 is the right number for most of the tests and the higher you get the worse it is.  On one element, his numbers have gone down (good news).  On one element, the numbers are steadily creeping up (but they are not at his highest levels that he's had, but we thought we had this under control).  And the rest are holding basically steady.  (Which is not good news.)

How is stable not good news?  Well, they should be declining.  The numbers need to go down.  He needs to go into "remission".  Until then, his kidneys are still at a very high pressure.  Eventually it's going to "blow".

Think of the kidneys like a dam.  There should be no holes.  But this one has many holes.  The pressure of the water (No matter how hard it's trying to hold) will eventually push through and collapse the dam, it will just "burst".  So you'd have to find a way to plug the hole or reduce the pressure.  With every day that passes, it's increased risk of rupturing the dam. 

The analogy isn't perfect but I think you get the idea.  FSGS kids can go from "holding steady" to EMERGENCY in no time.  (Like over night we're told.)  The doc is actually a little surprised that he is still doing so well considering how long these numbers have been so high. 

In summary ... we're thankful he's not declining.  We're still in major need of a complete healing.