Yay that's fantastic news!
Hope you recover fully, man!
Thanks, me too! Realistically, I probably won't get past ~75 GFR (GFR being the 1-100 scale that is used to determine kidney function) and that is perfectly fine with me, since when I found out about everything I was at 20 which is at the bottom end of stage 4 and the only option once you drop out of stage 4 is dialysis. I've since recovered to around 50-55 when even my nephrologist didn't think I would get past 40, so as long as I monitor my blood pressure I will be able to live a normal life just like the people with two good kidneys
I have been looking at the recent medical advances pretty optimistically too, as if there was an option to have another kidney grown for me that would ease my mind a little.
Jesus dude, thats incredible!
What does it take to get that number climbing upwards?
In my case, it was just controlling my blood pressure at first and more recently, having a surgery that removed my adrenal gland as it had a growth on it that was causing problems.
The blood pressure was the first and most important part, as I was hospitalized almost 3 years ago because I went into see a specialist for a routine visit but my blood pressure was a tad high at 270/140. For those not familiar with blood pressure levels, you are supposed to be around 120/80 and the level I was at was easily within stroke territory. Apparently my body had just gotten used to running at higher levels, and it took almost 6 days along with a daily dose of 25 pills for them to get it down and under control. Once it was under control my kidney function slowly recovered but I really wanted to get off of the myriad of medication so I ran with some information that the original specialist had given me and went to see an endocrinologist. The endocrinologist was great and got a surgery set up for me, and since that happened in November of 2015 I have dropped down to 10 pills a day and will likely drop to even less at my next visit.
Overall, I'm very happy with how things have turned around but I do have one major gripe about this whole process: the ****ing medical bills. That hospital stay where I laid in bed for 5-6 days and just got pumped full of pills ran me almost $70K before insurance ($5k after) and the recent surgery that took about 30 minutes with another 12 hours laying in a bed to let the drugs wear off before I was discharged ran another $35K before insurance ($3k after). That doesn't include my ~$150 monthly prescription cost (after co-pays) which I have happily reduced to around $50 since I'm not taking as much as before.