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Dialysis: What type of dialysis are you on?
Kidney & Bladder | Last Active: Feb 10 3:10pm | Replies (17)Comment receiving replies
@kamama94 I enjoyed your post regarding Dialysis. You have been a source of hope, encouragement and inspiration to me for a long time. I’ve been told I will eventually need dialysis &/or kidney transplant at some point. I am also diabetic (mostly another story). I saw that you are newly diagnosed with gastroparesis. I have that too. It can be really tough to deal with! I’d like to share what I know about it and what as helped me. It is a type of autonomic neuropathy associated with diabetes. Basically the nerves that help control functioning of internal organs ( in this case the stomach) are damaged and the organ doesn’t work properly. In this case the stomach doesn’t digest and empty as it should. Food gets stuck there, ferments and causes nasty and painful digestive symptoms (nausea, vomiting, cramping, alternating constipation / diarrhea). I was told by a dietician that frequent, low fiber smaller meals can be helpful. She also admitted that it is not particularly very nutritional. You have done so much work in putting together the recipe collection for chronic kidney disease (CKD) and I’m sure you probably know and follow guidelines for healthy eating with diabetes; don’t know if you are up for one more dietary dimension but I thought I’d mention it. I think it is something that “couldn’t hurt, might help”. Continue to take care. You are in my thoughts and prayers.
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@cehunt57, thanks for the support, encouragement, and info!
Since I have dentition issues in addition to CKD, diabetes, GP, etc., I have had to try to design a liquid-to-soft diet plan which is low-fiber (opposite the diabetic diet's higher fiber!) and which does not conflict too much with a renal diet.
Kidney function so far remains stable just below 30. . .
However, since I'm currently not on dialysis, I'm not getting enough protein since the veggies on a vegetarian/vegan kidney friendly diet which have complete proteins (corn, squash, beans) either have too much fiber also and/or too much potassium. Either that or the higher protein foods I need also have too much fat for a GP diet. (Sigh!)
As a fellow diabetic, I'm sure you understand when I say I cannot do 6 small meals a day because it would involve 7 needle sticks of insulin a day, one short acting lower-dose insulin shot with each of the 6 meals and a long-acting insulin injection at bedtime. Have had to compromise and eat 3 slightly larger than small meals (taking insulin only for those and one long acting dose at night) plus 3 snack meals (less than a small meal.)
I also take one 500+ mg ginger capsule with the 3 larger meals (to reduce nausea and promote gastric motility) but not with the snacks. My ginger intake is much lower than the recommended upper limit; right now this fairly low dosage is helping a lot and all in all I've been having three or even four good days a week lately instead of one or none.
I'm one of those CKD patients whose potassium levels have fairly recently become too low; I suspect this is related to malabsorption from GP rather than a kidney deciding suddenly to filter potassium better (that's my version of a sick joke, sorry.) As a result, since I use no added salt whatsoever, not even in cooking, I have been using 1/16 to 1/8 tsp of the salt substitute potassium chloride, aka Nu-Salt, on days I know my potassium intake will be too low for that day. I ran this idea by my Neph before doing it, of course, and she approved. She's also the one who reminded me I could take ginger to see if it helped with nausea and so far she's been right on both counts.
If I could just find a way to take in more protein and less fat I'd be a happy camper!
So good to hear from you. Hang in there!