Many women with chronic kidney disease have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies. That is worth saying first, because a CKD diagnosis often comes with the unspoken assumption that pregnancy is off the table. It is not. But it does need a plan. Pregnancy puts extra work on the kidneys, and CKD raises the chance of … Read more
A single blood pressure reading in a clinic tells your nephrologist very little. You might have rushed in from the parking lot, skipped your morning pill, or felt nervous in the exam room. Two weeks of well-taken home readings tell a much clearer story. For kidney patients, that story shapes real decisions: which medicine to … Read more
Your heart and kidneys work as a pair. The heart pumps blood to the kidneys, and the kidneys decide how much salt and water stay in that blood. When one struggles, the other gets pulled down with it. That link is why people with chronic kidney disease are more likely to die from heart disease … Read more
Ada sits at the heart of Chickasaw country, and Pontotoc County is home to thousands of Native American families. It is also home to our Ada office at 530 N Monte Vista. Every week we see the same pattern: kidney disease found late, in people who had diabetes or high blood pressure for years before … Read more
Most people with diabetes or high blood pressure get a kidney number on their yearly labs. That number is usually eGFR. Far fewer get the second test that catches kidney damage years earlier: the urine albumin to creatinine ratio, or UACR. That gap is real. Federal data from 2023 show only about 56 percent of … Read more
Stage 5 chronic kidney disease means your eGFR has dropped below 15, the last of the CKD stages. Most people assume dialysis is the only next step. It is not. Conservative kidney management (CKM) is a planned, active treatment path for people who decide dialysis is not right for them. It is not “giving up,” … Read more
A stage 4 chronic kidney disease diagnosis usually lands hard. Your estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) now sits between 15 and 29 mL/min/1.73m², which means your kidneys are filtering at roughly 15 to 29 percent of normal capacity. Here is the part most people do not hear on the day of diagnosis: stage 4 is … Read more
Kidney healing follows a sequence. Urine volume rises first. Creatinine falls next. Symptoms improve last, usually one to three weeks behind the labs. Patients who expect that order stop misreading normal recovery as failure. Two categories of evidence matter. Objective signs are measured — urine output, creatinine, eGFR, potassium, phosphorus, bicarbonate, urine protein. Subjective signs … Read more
Patients leave the hospital asking one question: when will my kidneys be normal again? The honest answer uses three separate timeframes that nephrologists apply to every case. Those windows matter because they set expectations correctly. Creatinine that has not returned to baseline at discharge is normal, not a failure. Creatinine still elevated at 90 days … Read more
Sharp back pain by itself is usually muscular. Low urine output by itself is usually dehydration. Together, they describe a blocked kidney until proven otherwise, and blockage destroys kidney tissue on a clock. Pressure inside an obstructed kidney begins reducing filtration within hours. Function that returns almost completely after 24 hours of obstruction may not … Read more
