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A happy liver

I'm two weeks into my Tolvaptan adventure and I'm happy to report that liver tested with no change to the pre-medication levels. A shout out to my liver. Way to go!

One of the potential side effects of the medication is liver damage (which has been proven to be reversible as long as it's caught early). Discontinuation of the drug causes the reversal.

Fortunately, the reported incidence of liver damage is relatively low at only 4-5%.

More recently, in large registration trials of long term therapy in patients with ADPKD, serum aminotransferase elevations occurred in 4% to 5% of patients on tolvaptan, compared to only 1% of controls.  Furthermore, clinically apparent liver injury occurred in approximately 0.1% of treated patients.  The time to onset of illness ranged from 3 to 7 months (Case 1), but occasionally arose during long term therapy (Case 2: after 3 years of intermittent use). National Institute of Health

Crossing my fingers that we'll be able to increase my dosage from 45/15 to 60/30. Til later.

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Round 2 deja vu

My doctor decided to keep me at the initial 45/15 mg dose for another months so I'm anticipating a similar water consumption. Here are the first four of seven (?) or eight (?) five gallon bottles of water. My local grocery store has a water bottle fill station for an extremely reasonable 39 cents a gallon. The frugal side of me thinks I should invest in reusable water bottles and take advantage of the savings. The lazy side of me thinks that it'd be a total hassle to wash the bottles, keep bugs and dust from falling into them before I'm able to refill them, remember to take them with me to the store (I can't even remember those reusable shopping bags) and then stockpile a source of bottle caps. It's just so much easier to buy these recyclable five gallon bottles. Lazy beats frugal.

Winner Winner!

Mon Apr 1 2019 - Just look what showed up on my doorstep (okay, it was actually a FedEx driver) by 930am this morning! Super, super exciting!!! I had that box open and my first dose taken in no time at all. My biggest concern now is whether taking it at 930am is going to mess with my sleep. They say that it's best to take the first dose as early as possibly (my plan is 6am) so you can take the second dose as early as possible (8 hours later at 2am) so you're not waking up all night having to go to the bathroom. As it is, I won't be taking my second dose until 530pm. Ugh. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, here's what everything looked like when I opened the box (yes, I took time to actually photograph this momentous moment). After the inspection of the non-med part of the box, I set my bottle of water next to me (I was working from home) and I waited. And I waited. How long would it take before I needed to go to the bathroom?!? Turned out to take 45 min...