Skip to main content

Six Months of Jynarque!

Wow. Talk about falling off the wagon. The blog wagon that is.

It's been almost four months since I last posted. That's what happens when you take a vacation, lose your focus and start thinking about things other than my kidneys.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

But I'm still here. I'm still taking Jynarque... six months later. And I'm still hydrating to the tune of one to one and a half gallons a day. Yes, it's down from my two gallon habit but it's so much more manageable.

I'd always thought that the goal of Jynarque was to ramp up the dosage as quickly as possible and to stay at that level as long as you could manage. But after talking with my doctor - and checking with my peeps on the Facebook group - I found that urine concentration (or lack of concentration) was a marker used in determining dosage.

So my doctor and I decided to stay at the 60 mg/30 mg dosage based on my urine osmolality (which is just another way to say pee dilution). The normal range is 300-900 mOsm/kg of water. My results back in June were 155 mOsm/kg, so you can say that I'm well hydrated (and my doctor was pleased). I was re-tested earlier this week and my osmolality went up to 205 but I had travelled the weekend before AND was sick so I'm confident it will be back down in three months. Regardless, I'm well below 300 which is the goal.

As for my other stats, I'm good. The monthly liver tests are stable, as is my eGFR. Nothing's improving, but that's not the goal. Both my doctor and I are please with how I'm doing so, so far, the Jynarque "experiment" is a success

Labels:

Comments

  1. KriscOctober 21, 2019 at 8:34 AM

    Do you think your flank pain is from Jynarque or cyst pain? I have been on Jynarque since April. My flank is getting worse, especially when I am on my feet for long periods of time. My breathing is also somewhat labored. I also have Crohn's disease so they want me to have a CT scan, but I think it is either from my cysts or Jynarque. Do you think your fatique is from kidney disease or from Jynarque?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Most Read

It's getting real...

I looked at my phone messages on Monday night and was excited to find a call from the Mayo Clinic. Would they tell me that I had to wait for further deterioration before I could be evaluated for transplant? Or would they tell me to make the drive to Rochester to go through a battery of tests and meetings? It turned out to be the latter. Yay! They're going to evaluate me for transplant in April! Wait a minute. They're going to evaluate me for transplant... Crap. As they say in the movies (?), shit's getting real. I'm trying to stay positive, telling myself that this way I'll be able to get my name on the transplant list as soon as my eGFR hits 20. I'll be able to maximize my time on the list. But every so often, the positivity slips and the fear and anxiety appear. And the questions. All the questions... Will I be able to keep working? Will I be able to afford this? How will this affect my retirement? Will I be able to retire early? How will I pay...
Post a Comment
Read more

Truth

The need is real! I don't know if it's because prior to Tolvaptan I routinely used mind over matter to delay my trips to the restroom, but I think I'm doing okay these days. Is it possible that I built up bladder muscles over the years? Don't get me wrong, the need to pee is omnipresent. But it's one of those things where I can make note of it, finish what I'm doing (or finish a couple more things) and then make my way to the facilities without the fear of letting things fly. But I'm not stupid. You'd better believe I'm making the restroom my last stop before starting my 45 to 60 minute commute to/from work. A soggy crotch is NOT becoming.
Post a Comment
Read more

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.
Post a Comment
Read more

Test tube kidneys?

While I'm sure that Miromatrix would shudder at my description, it looks like they're developing the equivalent of a test tube kidney which could be used for transplant. While the science and bioengineering behind it is extremely complex, this is how I understand it. Miromatrix uses decellularization and recellularization technology to create a transplantable kidney. Huh? They take an dead organ - it doesn't even need to be human - and using detergents (I'm guessing they're stronger than Dawn ;-) ) they strip away all the cells. What remains is the kidney's extracellular matrix (collagen, enzymes and glycoproteins) and all its chemical cues. Then the "generic" organ is repopulated with the transplant candidate's cells, eliminating the risk it will be rejected upon implantation. Early studies have shown that it takes from four to eight days to culture the transplantable kidney and, even better, the new organ produces urine when tested. B...
Post a Comment
Read more

It's a family affair

Both of my brothers have ADPKD as well. The odds of a PKD parent having a child with PKD are one in two. The odds of having two with PKD are one in four, or 25%. Three? a 12.5% chance. We "beat the odds" (i.e. the PKD is strong in this line). Thankfully - for me - my PKD is less aggressive (although still not good). While I have a bit of a "PKD belly", it's not excessive. And instead of true pain, I only suffer from discomfort. Not so for my little brother. Despite being nine years younger, his kidneys are MUCH larger. You can actually see the outline of them on his belly. And instead of discomfort, he experiences true pain. So much so that he recently went in for surgery to have the size of some of his larger cysts reduced. The surgery is called Percutaneous (through the skin) Sclerotherapy and is an outpatient procedure. Larger cysts are identified through a CT scan or MRI, during which the doctor inserts a needle to aspirate (drain) and then s...
Post a Comment
Read more