So if you are a wife and you have a husband who is like mine you know how hard it is to change their eating habits. With my husband there are a few things that he just loves Dr. Pepper, Coke, milk, tomato sauce on spaghetti or pizza. These are all good foods but not when you only have one kidney. Soda’s that are dark in color contain phosphorus and that is very hard for kidneys to process. I am not sure what is in the cooked tomatoes or milk that are hard on kidneys but the nephrologist (kidney doctor) said that they are.
I have tried to switch him over and so far we have been doing well. The reality is that if he does not reduce these foods and control his blood pressure and blood sugars he will be on dialysis and on the transplant list in the next few years. If we can control it we can buy quite a while with his one remaining kidney but it is always going to be a work in process.
I have not made him give up all sodas just the dark ones, he can still have milk just small glasses of 2% (the doctor would prefer soy but he is not going to do that) for tomato sauce we will do a pizza every other week but on the spaghetti we have been using alfrado sauce. So far he has been doing great even when he goes to the store and grabs a soda he is grabbing a clear or orange soda instead of his dark sodas of the past.
When my husband had his surgery to remove his kidney he was kept in the hospital longer because his creatine levels in his blood were dangerously high. His other kidney did not want to work right. We got his levels down a bit in the hospital and the specialist let him go home.
He went to have lab work and got the results and his creatine level was 1.09 ! The doctor mailed them home for us because he knows how I am with lab work and he even put the ! in his notes. The actual comment was the levels are much lower than he was expecting for someone with only one kidney this soon after surgery. The normal range is .079 – 1.6 so a 1.09 is incredible.
I guess our little changes are working.