Today seems like a good day for my first blog entry! I woke up to an email saying my Lupus patient coded twice overnight. Coded means she had a cardiac arrest- her heart stopped.

Shockingly, she’s alive and awake. This lady is real fighter. She’s my first ever independent case of severe lupus nephritis (lupus in the kidneys). I’ve been treating her with chemotherapy since September 2023 and she’s still hanging in there. These types of cases are tough because the patient comes in with a poor prognosis and high likelihood of death and I’m just doing my best to help her get home to her boys (me and a lot of prayer anyway). Her story is long. I’ve spent a lot of tears and lost a lot of sleep over this patient and many others. I’ll reference her from time to time because she’s the patient who helped me transform into the Nephrologist I am today.

Today wasn’t all bad though. For context, every chair in the dialysis unit has a tv in front of it for the patient to watch. One of my very kind dialysis patients asked if he could hook up his video game console to the tv so that we (he and I) can play Mario Kart or Mario Party (my favorite). And that made my heart smile. I told him I’d make some time to play him if he is able to pull that off. He’s not allowed to cry when I win though.