My nephrologist left me a voicemail today. I figured he had something significant to say when I first realized he had called. The only other time I remember him calling me on a weekend or evening was back in February 2008 when, while I awaited a flight back to North Carolina from Newark, New Jersey, he told me the results of my latest bloodwork showed a significant rise in my creatinine level, and that I ought to get to the ER. (It still took a another two weeks to determine that I had had a kidney stone blockage).

Anyway, today’s news wasn’t quite as dramatic, though it does signal another stage in this long road to kidney failure. I can now attribute my constant fatigue to something measurable and perhaps treatable. I’ve become anemic, or at least what I recall from the voicemail is that my hemoglobin has dropped quite significantly from the slightly-below-normal level that it used to be at.

It would be nice if a couple of iron pills would take care of this, but the treatment is to get a shot every few weeks. I haven’t felt like listening to the details of the message again today. It’s likely that most people reading this with any familiarity with anemia know what these shots are all about, but I don’t know right now. I am aware that learning to give them to myself is an option. I gave my cat Zellouisa insulin shots for a year or so awhile back, but I’m not sure if I’ll be up opting to give myself the shots, particularly since I live so close to the hospital, and so it won’t be a terrible inconvenience to go in for them.

As for dialysis, my creatinine is steady at 6.8, meaning it’s been below 7.0 for several months now. That’s “good”; kidneys at 10-11% as opposed to 8-9%, and that’s a big enough difference to keep me off of dialysis for now.

“Anemic” pretty much describes how I’ve felt for quite awhile overall, in every facet of my life. Maybe these shots will help.