renalee

    Blog

    Notes from living with dialysis and building renalee — written as a patient, not as a clinician.

    • I Took a Photo of a Snickers and It Stopped Being a Reward

      · 3 min read

      Between the metro and my front door there's one shop open late, and after two hours in the gym it doesn't look like a shop. On what a photo did that willpower couldn't.

    • Two Good Months and a Can of Coke

      · 4 min read

      Second month in a row, my labs came back in range, and the first thing my brain suggested was a can of Coke. On why a good result is the week I trust myself least, and what I bought instead.

    • The Boat Always Leaks

      · 6 min read

      Last night's dinner was a bag of salted sunflower seeds from the shop downstairs. On a dialysis diet, the slip isn't the problem — the drift is. A report from inside one, with two days until Monday's session.

    • I Blamed the Watermelon. It Was the Olives.

      · 5 min read

      It was 35 degrees, I skipped the air conditioning, and I remember two bites of watermelon. Monday's scale disagreed. The chain that actually got me there started at the kitchen counter.

    • The Same Dinner Costs More on a Saturday

      · 6 min read

      I spent two years thinking I had a character problem on Sundays. It turned out to be a calendar — and it lives in the long gap between Friday's session and Monday's.

    • I Know What Too Much Salt Feels Like. High Potassium Feels Like Nothing.

      · 8 min read

      After years on dialysis I can read my own body — sodium and phosphorus both have a feeling. Potassium, the one that can stop your heart, has none. Here's why I stopped trusting how I feel.

    • The Phosphorus Hiding in My Groceries (And Why the Label Never Told Me)

      · 6 min read

      I'm on dialysis in Portugal, and most of my readers shop in the US. Neither label has to list phosphorus. Here's how to find the hidden kind on both sides of the Atlantic.