My Story Vol. 7

Since all the immediate (and not so immediate) family knew about the appointment with the MFM doc the phone started to ring not too long after Matt and I got home.
Matt answered the calls from his side and I took the ones from mine. Not easy phone calls to take, let me tell you. How do you tell your dad his little girl is very sick? Not only very sick but sick and pregnant with his first grandchild and living five hours away. I stuttered a lot. My mom took it as she always does when it comes to me. She acted like I was making much ado about nothing but that is a whole other story there.
They all wanted to know 'what next?' and there was not a lot I could tell them other than my kidneys were spilling protein in huge amounts and the doctors don't think I could survive the pregnancy. Jeez, that sucked to have to say out loud much less think. It sucks to have to type even now.
The next appointment I had was with a Nephrologist. Nephrologists are scary. Their offices are filled with very sick people. I didn't belong there. I felt like a fraud. But I wasn't. The nurses were so nice. The doctor was so nice. He explained things to me and called me 'sweetheart'. I'll call him Dr. Suresh.
I've said it before, but again, I was so scared.
Now Dr. Suresh explained to me what they thought might be going on and why they all were freaking out so bad. See a person can spill a minute amount of protein and be ok. If you work out really hard or, for women, are near your period you can spill a little bit of protein. Something like less than a milligram. Mild kidney disease spills between 1 and 3 grams. Moderate kidney disease spills between 3-5 grams. Severe kidney disease is over 5 grams. I was spilling over 9 grams of protein a day. Not good. Not good especially since I was only 13 weeks pregnant (at the time of the Nephrologist appointment) and protein spilling like that, without prior kidney disease is due to pre-eclampsia. I was way too early to be pre-ecplampsic. I had to have far advanced kidney disease. They needed to find out what was happening with me ASAP.