Fluid Fallback

For the first time since going on disability in early August, I have returned back to work. Well, I've technically returned to work; I'm available, but I haven't gone on any client calls yet. This means that this week I've been working on projects from home.

One of the things I was nervous about was once I began working, I would be constantly in a sitting position. Yep, those days of TV-watching and long siestas would now be just a thing of the past. But all the laying around did have some usefulness. Sitting places pressure on your upper legs, which in turn makes it more difficult for circulation. For people with proteinuria, this is a problem since your kidneys still cannot draw fluid up and out of the body. As a result, I knew that I would take a step back in managing the edema until I learned to cope with this lifestyle change. I estimated that since I was making excellent progress with my kidneys, I would need to only make a slight adjustment in my water pill dosage to help my body with the trapped fluid.

Boy, was I wrong. Within four days, I gained over three pounds of fluid in my upper legs -- the most I've had put on since I began my second treatment four months ago. Putting on edema and not managing it will put you in a nasty downward spiral: the fluid acts as a "traffic jam", meaning that putting on fluid will cause you to retain even more fluid.

So I need to act fast before this get out of control. Time to bring out the big guns. My 80mg Lasix pills, which I hoped I would never ever need again, were unwrapped and taken out of retirement to deal with this new threat. I'm hoping to balance things in a few days, but I think that my days of getting by without any medicine have come to a halt, at least for a while.