09/02/2016 - Lower my Pills!

I keep having some "Lower my bills" slogan in my head...must have seen it on the side of a metro-bus or something.  So, just ran with it to name this blog post....

I had an 8:45am lab appointment and a 9am office visit on Friday 9/2.

I was told that they would look at my blood levels taken that morning, and e-mail me later that day if I could reduce any further pills.  I had complained a little about how uneasy my stomach was with all the magnesium that they had me taking so I was hoping to drop down on the 5 pills I took daily there.

Later that day, the good news came in an e-mail:

Awesome, Miss <Miss.Really.Awesome@gunet.georgetown.edu>
Sep 2 (3 days ago)

to me, Tessa 
Mr and Mrs White-

Great to see your both today.  We can decrease your cellcept to 500mg twice  a day and your tacrolimus to 3mg twice a day. We can also go down on your Mag Oxide to just two in the AM and two in the PM.  So skip the lunchtime dose.

We will get labs as planned.

Thanks,

Miss Awesome, ANP-BC
Post Liver Transplant Nurse Practitioner
Georgetown University Transplant Institute


Translated to English that means I can reduce my CellCept (anti rejection drug) to take 4 pills a day rather than 8 pills a day.  I can also decrease my Tacrolimus (a different anti rejection drug) from 7 pills a day down to 6 pills a day.

Since I'm a numbers guy and you're reading, in the last week, I'm down to:
8am - From 14 pills to 8 Pills
2pm - from 1 pill to no pills, skip all together
8pm - From 9 pills to 7 Pills

So from 24 pills to 15 pills in a week, that's a pretty stellar decrease.

8pm Pills:

Toot-Toot

Looking forward over the next year or so, I hope to drop my cell-cept altogether and only maybe be on my Tacrolimus.  All of these drugs are hard on my single kidney so my ultimate goal would be to read in the New York Times about some breakthrough where they can find a way to stop taking pills and still have the liver perform and not reject in my body.  I really believe that this is possible and hope it's not more than 20 years away.  The biggest problem for me is that I already only have a single kidney and so if these drugs really beat my kidney up, I might need a new one of those too and that's too daunting of a prospect to think about so I'd much rather think that science comes up with some shortcut breakthrough....