life, the universe, labs...

January 1, 2004

Hi guys,

Just checking in... Best wishes to everyone for a happy and healthy new

year. We've got a few bits of news worth passing on.

First, bit of news (naturally!) is labs. Unfortunately, 's C3

continued taking a bit of a dive (down to 79). C3 isn't a value that is

important to IgAN folks, but our neph takes the position that is is very

important to MPGN folks. If his C3 continues to be in the toilet next

month, it's back for more 1000 mg IV pred runs. I'm still trying to sort

things out, but my hunch is that this is happening because we tried to get

him off the pred too fast (he was down to 30 mg at the time of the blood

draw). Many MPGN patients stay on pred for years and years. We'll see

where this goes. The good part of the labs is that everything else looked

great: Protein creatinine ratio was 0.17!! Microalbumin was down, CBC

looked good. I wish I knew whether his podocytes were up.... but

unfortunately, given the holidays, the labs that does the podocyte count was

not open to deliver samples to.

Second, I won't be responding to posts as reliably as I have in the past

because my hands are full here. I mentioned this to most of the other

moderators, but was remiss about mentioned to the list at large. A bit

before Christmas, my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. Given my dad's

age, this fits into the category of " everybody has to die of something " -

however, it's getting a little time consuming. I'm still here and still

posting, just not as reliably. If anybody has any advice on long-distance

care giving (unfortunately, and I are my dad's only relatives - and

he's 3000 miles away), email me privately! Right now, I'm just

concentrating on investigating hospice benefits under Medicare.

I am very impressed with the people who were posting up until the magical

hour last night! For us, middle age took it's toll and I was curled up in

bed at 9:00. Last year, and I were checking IGAN email almost every

hour - and watching New Year's come in round the world.

Happy new year to all!

Cy

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