This is a story about filtration...

Muscle damage causes the release of myoglobin. The kidneys try to filter out the myoglobin, but it causes damage to the renal tubular epithelium, causing acute kidney failure. Creatine kinase (CK) is an enzyme and a marker that allows muscle damage to be detected by a blood test. Creatinine is a waste product produced in your muscles, normally eliminated by your kidneys. High levels of Creatinine in your blood indicate kidney failure.

So, we know that a muscle of mine must have been damaged, because my CK reading went higher than the test was able to measure. We also know that my kidneys had failed, because my Creatinine levels were also off the charts.

Dialysis has cleared the backlog of all the toxic crap that was damaging my kidneys and had caused them to fail. My kidneys are now a bit better and I'm now making pee.

The question is, are my kidneys working efficiently enough to remove all the creatinine that my muscles are creating? Also, is the original muscle injury still chucking out a load of toxic myoglobin, which is injuring my kidneys?

So, I measure how much I drink, and I measure how much I pee, and hopefully there isn't much difference - at least my kidneys should be able to get rid of the fluids and stop my body from swelling up. Also, my blood gets regularly tested. The creatinine, which is currently at about 1,000ppm, needs to drop to around 100ppm. My CK should reduce slowly over time, and certainly not increase. Provided all those things are happening, I can stop dialysis and let my body heal itself.

If my creatinine is not going down, or starts going up, then my kidneys just aren't recovered enough to be able to cope on their own. If my CK starts going up, then I still have some kind of muscle injury that's going to cause my kidneys to fail again, unless I have regular dialysis to filter the toxins out of my blood.

So, every drop of pee counts. The more I drink and the more I pee, the more creatinine and CK gets carried out of my body, making life easier for my kidneys and increasing the likelihood that I can recover without any more medical intervention.

I'm currently trying to build up a data set of blood test results, drink consumption and volume of pee, so that I can demonstrate to the doctors tomorrow that I don't need weeks and weeks more dialysis, and I can go start my new job on Monday.

So, cross your urethras for me that I can do it, and get my pee up to impressive volumes and get that nasty creatinine and CK flushed out of my system naturally, so I can go home tomorrow or Saturday.

I also get to have a rubber tube that's been inserted 24 centimetres - over 9 inches - into my groin region, removed from my body. I'm hoping to avoid having to have a similar tube inserted into the jugular vein in my neck.

Lots at stake. Pray for pee!

Tags: #hospital