Saw Hemo today regarding deficiencies....

My surgeon appointment is next Monday, my PCP tomorrow, but I saw my hemo today with labs in hand. 

I asked specifically for calcium infusions, since that has been my issue out of the gate, and he agreed. 

Actually, since I have osteopenia, and did not know about Reclast not being compatible with DS systems beforehand, I believe that might be it. 

I'm going to emphasize the deficient parts of my labs, calcium in particular, when I see my PCP tomorrow.  She and the hemo share a building, and I will ask her to emphasize and prescribe the infusions, to get the levels that didn't come up enough, to come back up to where I can maintain them.   Some are low normal, which is not good enough for me, and others are below normal.  are not that far off from low normal, which is better, but they're not where they were.  Protein issue is resolved.

The low labs were initially  Vitamin D (unresolved), Vitamin K (Don't know, lab did not run test  - will tell both doctors) lab did not run the test this time,need to check with doctor)  prealbumin (resolved) zinc (still low, but not by much), PTH (high means bone leaching is going on, mine was 142) , iron (resolved)

Has anybody ever gone through this?  I screwed my levels up last spring,  by not taking care of myself properly while my Mom was dying.

I havent' gone through this, but I want to say you did the best you could when you were taking care of your mom, I commend you.  You will get through it, keep advocating for yourself, if you feel crapy, don't let anyone dismiss you....wishing you well

airbender,

Thank you so much for your kind words.  My Mom died just four days shy of her 93rd birthday, but at least she got to see me the way I looked in my younger days.  I'm still a bit "thick" due to loose skin on my lower body, but the skin removal is one reason I'm stressing so much over vites!

Surgeon will not operate if there are deficiencies of any kind, so I'm already 7 months behind schedule.

He's going to do a staged procedure - lipo first, then thigh reduction  (I carried most of my weight in my lower body.)

I've not dealt with the calcium issues, sorry I can't help there.

How much vitamin D are you taking? It took me about a year to bring up my levels doing 100kIU/daily.

If you struggle with Zinc (gastro-wise) you should look into zinc picolinate. I buy the NOW brand on Amazon. It's amazing. I've been unable to take zinc because it always hurts my stomach but the picolinate version does not hurt at all.

The PTH will come down when your D goes up. :)

I don't have any gastro problems with zinc.

I know aboutthe PTH-D thing.  The parathyroids are what sends out the signal to "get calcium" (bone leaching) whenever a low calcium blood level is detected. 

Otherwise, they just sit there and look pretty 

I took 50,000 IU daily for one month, then cut back to 10,000 IU daily.  I'm going back to the 50,000 IU permanently.  maybe even twice a day for 100,000 IU!

I am deficient in Vitamin A.  Since we don't absorb fat and it is a fat soluable vitamin I need the intramuscular injections.  The drug is called Aquasol A.  It is on the FDA drug shortage list.  The one company in the entire world that makes this drug has basically put it on hold for the last almost 3 years.  The results????  I am going blind!!!!!!  Any one else have this problem????

I've not had any problems with A E or K...I take that back, I did have a problem with K my labs last winter, but it has been resolved.

The issues I'm dealing with now are low D, low zinc High PTH and high ferritin. It is high because I was infused last summer for anemia...first time I've been anemic in life, so it really isn't a problem per se, it's just a bit over the upper normal 150 ng/mL at 207.  It is trending down.

I take 25,000 IU of A twice a day. You can get Dry A on eBay, and I think Amazon.