Category: Chronic Renal Failure

Cloudy With A Chance Of UTI

Having lived with chronic kidney failure for the past seven years, I am especially observant of my urine every time I empty my bladder. There are two signs that I look out for in my urine: clarity and smell. Yes, I smell my own urine! Normally, it would be pale yellow in colour and clear.

The first emptying of my bladder this morning yielded a kidney dish-full cloudy urine. There were sediments at the bottom of the dish after I left it for a while. Cloudy urine is never a good sign. It could be the symptom for a number of serious problems like urinary tract infection (UTI) and acute kidney disorders.

This is not the first time I have had this problem. It appears once in a long while. I suspect I have mild bladder infection since there is some discomfort in that area and there is the urge to urinate more frequently. There is no fever and the urine smell is nothing out of the ordinary. Fever with bladder discomfort is a sure sign of urinary infection.

I am not too concerned yet as the cloudiness and the extra urge to urinate usually disappears after a day or two by drinking more water. I am increasing my fluid intake to flush out whatever that is inside there. Hopefully, the urine will be clear again by the end of the day and the extra urge would have disappeared as well.

Taming My Cravings

Pent-up cravings are dangerous. They make me eat more than I should in moments of weakness, break my low-protein diet and cause me to worry no end if I had caused my kidneys more damage. Most of those cravings are for meat dishes, if not meat then food high in purine and those that make me itch.

After 6 years of attempting to carefully watch my diet, I still succumb to such temptations every now and then, especially when Wuan and I make trips to Ipoh and Penang. There are simply too much good food in these two places to ignore. It is in Ipoh that I usually throw caution to the wind; invariably, at Restoran Wong Koh Kee, where the food is simply too delicious to resist.

Thankfully, it is not that often we travel up north to these two food paradises. Thankfully, too, Wuan keeps a close watch on what I put into my mouth. The look in her eyes when I am about to binge is enough to tame my cravings, however great they may be. She also keeps my diet in check by ensuring that my lunch on most weekdays are healthy and balanced.

Life is less flavourful when I need to watch what I eat all the time. I console myself with the fact that there are more interesting things to life than just delicious food. There are still sights to see, sounds to hear and sensations to feel. Being able to fully enjoy three out of those four is not that bad. Most importantly, I am alive. That desire to be alive longer so that I can spend more time with Wuan is the best deterrent to not succumb to my cravings.

Another Reprieve?

They may be mere digits on the monitor but they tell a lot. They determine my life’s direction, whether I take the right fork or the left. One will be a journey longer than the other. Where one prolongs, the other hastens. Inexplicably, both will lead to the same conclusion at some point in time. There is no escaping.

I wonder how I will choose when the time comes. I am glad I do not have to make that choice yet, or so I thought. The 3 digits that mattered most were 294, 294 umol/L creatinine that is, from the blood sample taken in December 16, 2009 as compared to the previous serum creatinine count of 299 umol/L, according to the attending doctor this morning. The KUB (Kidneys-Ureter-Bladder) ultrasound done in February 11, 2010, as expected, showed little change from the previous report as was confirmed by the radiologist when I asked her, which is a good thing.

As I went through the entry on my renal profile and KUB posted on June 2, 2009, I discovered suspiciously similar results, 294 umol/L for the latest results as compared to 299 umol/L for the previous. Surely, there is a mistake somewhere. The blood test results before the sample taken in December 16, 2009 should show 294 umol/L and not 299 umol/L.

Thinking back, I guess I have an idea of what happened. The blood sample taken in December 16, 2009 must have been misplaced somewhere along the chain of process. It was not extracted at the laboratory as is the usual procedure but at the rehabilitation clinic. Therefore, what I thought was the result for the December 2009 sample was in actual fact from May 2009. There is no result from December 2009.

I assumed. I was mistaken. I guess the doctor who attended to me this morning did not know a test was ordered to be done in December 2009 by another doctor. Somebody messed up my blood test but I am not going to pursue this. Anyway, the doctor has ordered a renal function, liver function, lipid profile and blood glucose be done before my next appointment in August. Till then, there is no reprieve for me yet.