The Water Deprivation Test

Right now my excessive thirst is making me nuts. This thirst, drink, urinate cycle is causing more trouble than anything. I can't get any sleep and am tired all the time. I thought that the fatigue was the WG, but now that the prednisone has helped all my other symptoms I think the fatigue is from my disrupted sleep patterns. I go to bed around 1am and wake up every 60-90 minutes to drink and pee until about 4:30am when I pump (which I will stop doing shortly). I then go back to sleep from about 5:30am-8:30am, waking up once or twice in that stretch. It is really driving me crazy. Dr. Awadh thinks I may have something called diabetes insipidus (unrelated to the more common diabetes mellitus).

Today was really rough. I had to take a water deprivation test to test for the diabetes insipidus today. I wasn't allowed to drink any water after 3am until my blood was drawn at 9am. This was pure torture since I have a huge thirst problem. I drank a ton of water at 3am, but woke up at 5am and couldn't go back to sleep because I was so thirsty. I kept getting up every 10 minutes to swish water around my mouth and spit it out.

After the test, I saw Dr. Awadh to discuss the results of both it and my lung biopsy. Dr. Awadh said the labs did show I had diabetes insipidus and he has referred me to a nephrologist. He said that the lung biopsy showed necrosis, but no active vascultis. It was negative for infection so he wants to start me on the Cytoxin.

I am planning to start taking the Cytoxin on Thursday morning, which gives me a couple of days to wean Amelia over to a bottle. Sob. :(

Meeting Dr. Latinis

I saw Awadh and Dr. Latinis today. They had gotten my labs and Lung CT scan from 2 weeks ago back. My labs indicated that the prednisone had caused a drop in the inflammation etc even after only the 4 days I was on it. My lung CT showed 2 nodules / cavities in my right lung. They had showed my lung CT to a pulmonolgist who recommended I have a CT guided needle lung biopsy. They want the biopsy to be certain that I don’t have some sort of infection in my lung before they put me on immunosupressents and secondarily to confirm the WG diagnosis. They said it is wouldn’t be uncommon for me to have WG and still have some sort of infection or even fungus in the necratized lung cavity. If they start the immunosuppressents when I have an active infection, they could obviously make me very very ill. I am fairly opposed to an open or even VAT lung biopsy, but I comfortable with the needle guided one.

My needle lung biopsy will be on 08/01/07 (Wednesday) and then I will return to get my treatment plan with Dr. Awadh on 08/06/07 (Monday).

Assuming I don’t have an infection in my lung, I will probably start Cytoxan at that time.