Last week I was in the middle of a set of blood tests because my creatine kinase levels were stratospheric.
Monday was the latest in the series. I just told the lab tech to "aim for the notch" on my left arm (Wed's test), and she was able to get the 5cc needed for the test.
Monday night, one of the doctors who had been monitoring all this called--my CK levels were down to 220 from a high of 4000 (yes, that's three zeroes) on Thursday. Kidney tests came out fine--I spent the weekend making extra sure I was very hydrated so all the cruft that was working its way out of my system wouldn't have a chance to clog things up.
This doctor's advice--get back on the suspected med, keep working out at the same levels I was doing (this guy is a known workout fiend), and get another blood test in two weeks to see if it's elevated again.
This morning my primary physician called--he'd been out on vacation, so he had just caught up with the fun and games. His advice--*stop* the suspected med, but keep working out and see if the CK goes back up again.
That makes a lot more sense--if the CK levels go up, I think they'd like to have a better reason *why* they did--doing the meds and the exercise would leave them with a "what's causing this" problem, and having to guess or swap out meds and hope.
I'd really rather avoid that.
Posted by lsefton at September 1, 2004 01:10 PM