Thank you Jake... I get called Jake a lot having a last name of Jacobson. Good luck with your kidneys... I kid you not!

Jake, thank you for your calcium oxalate diet changes post.
For a woman who has spent 7 decades eating anything and everything while maintaining constant weight and health, the past 11 months have been a rollercoaster of new challenging diagnoses and diet changes.

A self-imposed Diabetes II diet and Metformin brought my values back to normal range within three months but unexplained continuing nausea and weight loss started other tests.

Ultra sound and additional blood/urine labs indicated renal disease. Request for nephrologist revealed scary Stage 3 CKD but nephrologist refused referral to dietician “because my lab values weren’t abnormal enough to merit one” No appetite stimulant/supplements; told to “eat more food”. Started a renal diet and in 2 mos, my GFR went from 54 to 68 and other values improved.

Research and gingerbread and tabs along with learning side common nausea
effect of Metformin stopped the nausea but weight loss continued. Another self-imposed diet of calorie rich foods and second request to pcp for appetite stimulant/supplements and dietician referral got me to a dietician who provided great handouts on combined diabetic/ckd diet. The prescription for appetite stimulant worked and after 7 mos and 17 lb wt loss, I began gaining weight. Yes!

However, the lung ct scan pcp ordered at that visit showed kidney stones. Doc said they were too small to treat. This began the search for learning about oxalates for the kidney stones.

Steady weight gain for 3 mos until what doc and I thought was appendicitis. Instead, a
ct abdominal scan revealed acute diverticulitis. Had this been ordered first, instead of the ultra sound, I wouldn’t have known about the kidney disease or kidney stones.

Yet another diet. This one for liquids only and 2 prescriptions for 3,800 mg of antibiotics for 7 days. After 5 days stopped the scripts when dry heaves and rapid b.p. drops had me holding onto chairs to prevent fainting. Had begun introducing soft foods to diet.

Now, 5’8” and 124 lbs at Jan. annual exam, I’ve lost again to 98 lbs because of the miserable diverticulitis.

As a grateful newbie to this great forum and to the HealthUnlocked for Kidney patients,
I am learning more about how to better care for myself.

I am sharing my experience because I have proof that proper diet changes can improve chronic health conditions. We really are what we eat and if we can make the correct adjustments to our diets, our lab values and conditions can be helped.

However, because of the many diet changes made over the past 11 months, I had to stop and think about which condition my research on oxylates had been for. Jake, you
get the credit or discredit…smiles…for triggering this long sharing.

Perhaps the most important lesson learned is that a patient must become a persistent and informed patient advocate in working with her medical team. Haven’t counted but probably made too many and too frequent big diet changes over the past 11 months. However, I’ll never again rely solely on a quick scan of lab reports and blindly rely on whatever the doc does or doesn’t do as the last word on what affects my health.

Just yesterday ran into a friend who commented that her difficulties with what docs kept telling her was acid reflux might have been resolved much earlier if only she’d told one doc that she was on Boniva. He stopped the Boniva immediately and she is now symptom free. Best to all as we learn together.