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It's good news and bad news. The results came back normal.
This is good because we don't want her to be vitamin D toxic, of course...
It's bad because we've now exhausted all easy, minimally invasive and relatively inexpensive avenues to test to figure out why the hell her serum calcium levels keep climbing.
Dr. B. is leaning towards it being something related to her kidney disease vs. a malignancy somewhere in her body because she's not exhibiting any signs of having a cancer--her appetite's good, she's gaining weight, she doesn't cry out when touched or picked up, she's not depressed or lethargic. Everything behaviourally is normal. Then again, it could always be of unknown origin (idiopathic), too. We just don't know!
Dr. B's going to do more research on his end and talk to a few people he knows to see if he can't pinpoint a more solid answer as to why Diva's serum calcium is doing what it's doing. As he's said in the past, he doesn't think going after the cancer angle is necessarily prudent at this point given her behaviour, lack of evidence on multiple x-rays, and invasiveness and cost of other testing without evidence to support these tests. If she *did* have cancer, we likely wouldn't pursue treatment of it due to cost; we'd keep her comfortable for the duration, absolutely and completely, but treat it? That would depend on duration of treatment, potential outcomes and most importantly cost. I can barely afford to care for both Diva's and Jazz's CRF treatment--how the hell would I afford chemo and surgeries?!?!?
So now what? We keep on doing what we've been doing to treat the CRF (which has been largely successful so far--she's maintaining mostly great numbers for her kidney functions) and wait to see if she develops any symptoms of other problems. There's really no treatment Dr. B. knows of for hypercalcemia that wouldn't potentially put her life in jeaopardy--he's concerned if he found something to bring her calcium levels down that there's the possibility we could bring them down too low and end up in a life threatening situation.
So very, very frustrated. Frustrated enough to burst into tears when I explained everything to J on the phone. My poor sweet girl. I just hope she doesn't start manifesting side effects from it...that would suck so bad...
This is good because we don't want her to be vitamin D toxic, of course...
It's bad because we've now exhausted all easy, minimally invasive and relatively inexpensive avenues to test to figure out why the hell her serum calcium levels keep climbing.
Dr. B. is leaning towards it being something related to her kidney disease vs. a malignancy somewhere in her body because she's not exhibiting any signs of having a cancer--her appetite's good, she's gaining weight, she doesn't cry out when touched or picked up, she's not depressed or lethargic. Everything behaviourally is normal. Then again, it could always be of unknown origin (idiopathic), too. We just don't know!
Dr. B's going to do more research on his end and talk to a few people he knows to see if he can't pinpoint a more solid answer as to why Diva's serum calcium is doing what it's doing. As he's said in the past, he doesn't think going after the cancer angle is necessarily prudent at this point given her behaviour, lack of evidence on multiple x-rays, and invasiveness and cost of other testing without evidence to support these tests. If she *did* have cancer, we likely wouldn't pursue treatment of it due to cost; we'd keep her comfortable for the duration, absolutely and completely, but treat it? That would depend on duration of treatment, potential outcomes and most importantly cost. I can barely afford to care for both Diva's and Jazz's CRF treatment--how the hell would I afford chemo and surgeries?!?!?
So now what? We keep on doing what we've been doing to treat the CRF (which has been largely successful so far--she's maintaining mostly great numbers for her kidney functions) and wait to see if she develops any symptoms of other problems. There's really no treatment Dr. B. knows of for hypercalcemia that wouldn't potentially put her life in jeaopardy--he's concerned if he found something to bring her calcium levels down that there's the possibility we could bring them down too low and end up in a life threatening situation.
So very, very frustrated. Frustrated enough to burst into tears when I explained everything to J on the phone. My poor sweet girl. I just hope she doesn't start manifesting side effects from it...that would suck so bad...
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