My mom's nephrologist wouldn't treat her prednisone induced hypertension with an ARB or ace inhibitor which would have reduced the amount of protein her kidneys are dumping.
After the rtx treatments, he lowered her prednisone from 40mg to 20mg with 100mg Imuran and stopped doing weekly blood tests.
Her hemoglobin was going down and the last weekly test was 9 and he only recommended 40gms protein per day.
For a couple weeks I gave her 60-70 gms of protein per day and her blood work would get much better, but her bun would go high.
I lowered it to 40-50gms per day and she is now in the hospital getting her 3rd round of 2 pints of blood.
He finally, put her on an ARB and bp med after the ER staff pumped the blood in her too fast and had to use lasix to get out the extra water, dehydrating her again.
On top of this, he cut her 20mg of prednisone down to 5mg after being on 20mg for only 15 days.
Instead of offering a feeding tube with a high protein supplement, he wanted to send her home with a hemoglobin below 9 and said she will probably waste away.
She is only 76 years old but is on 2 LPM of oxygen for copd and tapering valium which causes aweful anxiety and panics. I'm sure he doesn't send his diabetic folks home to die when they are dumping too much protein. Everytime I ask him what those other people are doing to compensate for the protein loss, he avoids the question.
Anyone know how this is normally dealt with?
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