Eating While Living With CKD

It has been common for me that my doctors get offended when I am trying to get answers to the questions that I have. In the past, mine have tried to talk about their degrees that they have and can forget that we are human too. What is the outcome when we are unable to even eat while we are receiving treatments or being sick.

I used to not understand why sometimes I used to not eat anything, but felt so full. I used to not eat a lot but constantly gain weight. Then I realized it was not how much I was eating, it was what I was eating that affected me. Everything that was high in salt became a problem for me. Why? Because it didn’t help be do anything but retain fluid and cause more hospital visits.

It can be hard for me to eat foods I have in the past

I am from New Orleans, where the sodium in foods is at a all time high. I mean we season food until our ancestors tell us it is enough. So being in the state where we have great seafood and soul food, I tend to retain fluid and often need help flushing it. It's common for me to stay in the hospital for days because my pulse would elevate and my heart rate can get so high. My blood pressure would drop and I would go straight into a worse lupus flare than I already have been. During this time, I was on chemotherapy for my kidneys because my lupus affected me that badly. The treatments sometimes left me not wanting to eat and when I did, I had issues.

Lasix (furosimide) is a fluid pill that is most common to help release that fluid. At first I was on lisinopril and it didn’t help, it actually made me worse and I ended up being switched and placed on Losartan. When I gained fluid, I was around 187 pounds and when I lost weight, I dropped down to 150 pounds. So I had to realize all that was not fat but it was of fluid. There was times I could not sleep laying down because the fluid would rush to my chest and prevent me from breathing.

Finding foods that worked for me

So how did I take care of this? I started changing my seasonings. I learned that it's okay to tell restaurants how I wanted my food seasoned. I use Ms. Dash, garlic powder, and onion powder at home, so I began asking for these seasons while I was out. I also started to incorporate onions, garlic, bell peppers, and cilantro into my dishes. I started to drink more water and eat avocados, which helped my muscle spasms and kept me hydrated.