Goodbye, Tacrolimus, hello Advagraf

My blood work is excellent. My creatinine has consistently been in the 67-72 range, which my doc says is great. My other blood work is excellent as well. For that reason, I have graduated from twice a day tacrolimus to once a day Advagraf! 🙂

It’s great because I only have to remember to take this essential medication once a day (in the morning) as opposed to twice a day.  Some of my other medications have been removed as well, including calcitriol, valcyte, and nystatin.  I also will reduce my usage of omeprazole to nightly instead of both in the morning and at night.  I will take note of any reflux symptoms and resume morning usage if necessary.

With the changes to my medications, mostly the addition of the Advagraf, I will be doing blood work weekly instead of twice a week for the next 3-4 weeks or so. If all is well, I will be doing blood work once a month. That is a great relief! I don’t mind doing blood work, but the less I have to do it is obviously an indication that everything is stabilizing and “normal”.

Early last week, my left foot started to hurt me. It hurts whenever I take a step and is slightly swollen on top. So, knowing that I was going to have an appointment on Friday, I decided to ask for an x-ray, so I got the x-ray done.  Later on late in the afternoon, I got a phone call telling me that it “looked” like there might be a small fracture in my foot, and that I should go to emerg for more information.  Dang! Why does it have to be a Friday evening before long weekend??

So I already had plans to hang out with one of my buddies on Friday evening/night, so I decided to go to emerg early Saturday morning.

So Pops and I left on Saturday morning and headed off to emerg.  The wait wasn’t that long, however the doctors didn’t show up until 10am so that kind of prolonged our stay. Luckily still, I was attended to rather quickly.

The ER doc ordered a few more x-rays which I did.  After that, he looked at them and said that one of the 6 x-rays that were done showed a very tiny fracture in my foot.  He recommended sturdy shoes and avoiding hills, and if that didn’t improve my pain, come back in 1-2 weeks.

So, we’ll see how that goes…!