Gearing Up

Brain cancer is...

...gearing up for the next set of cancer eradication efforts.

In preparation for the next MRI scan and subsequent doctors' visits, Darrell had his blood tested today.  (Side notes:  He handled the blood test like a boss. The scan is Tuesday morning.)

As a reminder for frequent readers, because Darrell's MRI scan includes images "with contrast" (a dye that includes gadolinium, a heavy metal), they check his blood to make sure that his kidneys are functioning well enough to process the contrast.

Good news, Team!  Today's results indicate that Darrell's kidneys are working fine.  Specifically, his eGFR was 83/1.73m2.  According to my research, an MRI is fine as long as the patient has an eGFR greater than 30/1.73m2 (UCSF weblink here, for reference, and a major source of my information).  Go Darrell kidneys, go!

Nerd Alert:  Read on only if you want to know more about your friends, your kidneys.

• Kidneys filter waste products.  
• In fact, healthy kidneys filter approximately 200 quarts of blood every day.  (Thanks, kidneys!)
• Kidneys filter out the bad stuff while preventing loss of the good stuff, like proteins and blood cells. 
• Your kidneys' filters are called glomeruli. (No, Curt, no good pictures to share.)
• An eGFR test measures your estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate.  The higher your eGFR, the more blood you are effectively filtering.  The lower your eGFR, the less blood you are filtering effectively, and the more bad things (waste products) are accumulating in your blood.
• Specifically, an eGFR test assesses the amount of the waste product creatinine.  

In case we haven't said it lately:  Thank you kidneys!  You are an important part of (everyone's) team!

And because we all deserve a moment of beauty in addition to gratitude, we enjoyed the lupines at the park today:

 Happy (Purple) Friday!