Biopsy

As our faithful blog readers know, AM has had kidney disease since her pregnancy with EM. At her past couple of visits, her proteinuria has finally dropped to zero (a good sign as normally your kidney's should filter protein and not allow it to pass into the urine) but the other major measure of kidney function, serum creatinine levels, were significantly higher than normal. (They had previously been normal.) So her kidney specialist has finally decided it is time to perform a kidney biopsy to determine what exactly is going on so that appropriate measures can be taken.

She is scheduled to go for the biopsy just before the end of the month. Anyone who knows AM well knows she gets nervous about even simple medical procedures like drawing blood, so you can imagine that she is extremely nervous about this. From what we are told, a kidney biopsy is less painful and invasive of a procedure than getting an epidural which she has done three times for childbirth. Nevertheless, as a precautionary measure, she will need to stay in the hospital overnight and then avoid any heavy work for two weeks. There is a very small, but not zero, risk of the biopsy causing complete kidney failure.