Hi, all. I just need to vent a little. Last week-end I started coming down with a cold. By Monday night my airway was shutting down so a friend called 911 and I went to the hospital per ambulance where I was admitted from ER.

By the way, the local hospital, which is affiliated with a state university teaching hospital, offers a renal diet for inpatients with CKD but some of the offerings were outdated and better choices were unavailable on the menu but all in all it was a good kidney-friendly diet so kudos to my "small" city hospital. I did share some of my research with the hospital dietitian and she will be "tweaking" the hospital's renal menus.

I'm home now and doing much better but because I'm temporarily taking prednisone for my COPD and Combivent inhaler, my blood sugars are high when they had been so well-controlled at home before this episode. Both albuterol (in Combivent inhalers) and prednisone tend to interfere with insulin absorption which results in elevated blood sugars so I'm hoping this is a temporary setback which will resolve once I've finished the post-discharge meds.

I'm also hoping that the drop in my GFR from 37 to 35 while in the hospital is temporary. It's possible that the slight GFR drop is related to the viral load of the upper respiratory infection and will come back up once I have finished the COPD exacerbation meds and can improve my renal vegetarian diet a bit after that.

Also my BUN and Cr elevated slightly while I was in the hospital. They tend to be high anyway and I can't seem to get them down much. I'm not on any fluid restriction and I do drink about 6 8-oz glasses of water a day plus other fluids but this doesn't seem to have much effect. Any suggestions as to how to lower both the BUN and the creatinine would be appreciated.

I just wanted to share some of my frustration. Thanks for listening to me gripe.