I should add that, with the exception of the second half of December when I was traveling and sick (lovely combo), I never stopped my 7 day a week gym routine. Yet I lost lots of muscle mass and experienced a material reduction in the weights I could push-pull-bench whatever. It doesn't matter how much protein you ingest if your intestines won't put it in your damn blood stream.
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My recent health/fitness hiccup -
My recent health/fitness hiccupTransplant meds suck, prednisone's downsides are well known (though I seem to be fine with it), tacrolimus (prograf) destroys your kidneys over time to the point where many end up on a dialysis/transplant path, and mycophenalate (cellcept) wreaks havoc on your intestines. This is a story of the latter.
Cellcept can cause direct injury to the intestinal lining, to the point where it mimics celiac disease when biopsied. This is because the same mechanism by which it inhibits lymphocyte synthesis (a type of white blood cell) can block intestinal epithelial cell development.
I've lived with this to some degree or another for 10 years, which is why I buy loperamide (Immodium AD) by the gross. But I've gone through several episodes where it goes crazy, leading to the loperamide being ineffective, then chronic diarrhea leads to malabsorption issues which leads to significant involuntary weight loss.
My weight the week of 9/29 to 10/4 averaged 178. On the 24th of February I weighed 149lbs. That was at the end of the day, in the morning I was probably at 146-47.
The entire month of February I was counting calories, and averaged over 3000 calories a day, and was still shedding weight. I just couldn't absorb the nutrients I was consuming.
It took just a couple days after pausing the cellcept for my BMs to stabilize. My weight then started a pretty decent upward trajectory. Here it is in pictures:
(That low point is north of 150 because these are weekly averages)
Anyway, when I showed that to my transplant team last week there was little doubt that the cellcept was the cause.
In the last 7 days my weight has averaged 165 (at night) and I have consumed, on average, 4000 calories daily.
I hope to get back to 175 by sometime in May.
Then I need to wean myself back onto Cellcept. Starting with a lower dose and moving up from there. Welcome to transplant. But as LuFin would say, it beats the alternative.
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The Iran War (was Nuclear Program) threadWe will never forget your refusal to give us help we don’t need in the war we already won.
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The Iran War (was Nuclear Program) thread -
The Iran War (was Nuclear Program) thread -
The Iran war memes thead -
The Iran War (was Nuclear Program) threadInteresting ‘pressure index’ created by Deutsche Bank doing a kind of technical analysis on the TACO trade.
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Trump’s approval rating -
TSA nightmaresI thought about that but I’m sore that’s a multi hour wait too from all the people who figured out they can feign a broken foot and ‘skip’ the line.
I’ve gone through the wheelchair method before when I was really sick. It was pretty slow overall in normal circumstances even through you skip the security line. You go to a waiting area, wait in line for a clerk who enters your info into a system, then sit and wait for your guide. Can’t imagine how busy that system is during these times.
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The Iran War (was Nuclear Program) threadIran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi: "The fact that they are now talking about negotiations is an admission of defeat; didn’t they claim unconditional surrender before?
So why are they now mobilizing their top officials to negotiate?"
