Ups and downs of CKD

[Mgt8]

Does anyone else find their symptoms come and go......?

I'm at stage 4 but have been having a variety of symptoms since I was early stage 3. Last summer, for instance, 10 solid weeks of gout in one foot after the other kept me off my feet and sometimes confined to the house. The winter preceeding this, sickness, dizzyness and headaches came thick and fast.

The strange thing is that for a few weeks in between each new symptom there were periods of feeling almost normal again. (Apart from an increasingly swollen middle.)

Luckily I am at present going through one of these blissful times but I just wondered if this was a pattern that others with polycystic kidney disease have experienced. If so, it might give some hope for people going through a particularly hard time.

[vaw777]

Hi mgth I'm at stage 4 gfr29....33 and I was interested in your swollen middle... My doctor hasn't mention this.. is it part and parcel ofckd

Mine is swollen andi just can't get it down thought I was just putting on weight!!!vaw777

[Mgt8 in reply to vaw777]

Hi

My kidney desease is polycystic. It's the kind that's inherited and doesn't really affect you until you are older. (I'm 53)

Basically, cysts grow on the kidneys, making them enlarge. Mine are 31cm and 20cm, so quite a weight to carry round. It's like being pregnant again.

I am told that they don't usually enlarge quite so much until much later. My dad's were like this after he had been on dialisis for 17 years!

I have been offered the option of taking them out and starting dyalisis straight away but as my egfr is 20, kidneys are still working and I would like to give them the opportunity to continue to do just that.

Hope this answers your question.