Two Year Kidney Transplant Anniversary

My two year transplant anniversary was on Saturday.  I didn’t have anything special planned but that day was a tubing down a slow river with my wife and three others.  We didn’t have coolers of booze and the like but it was still a very enjoyable afternoon with a bit too much sun exposure, luckily only my knees were burned to a point of sensitivity in a warm bath.  On the way back we stopped at Texas Road House at my wife’s request and had small steaks with the great salad, rolls and a baked potato for me, plus a baked sweet potato for my wife (no sugar on that just butter).

Transplant wise things still look good, just decreased my Envarsus down to 2.75 mg (Tacrolimus level now at 5.3 ng/mL) from 3 mg (Tacrolimus level at 10.1 ng/mL then). Creatinine down as low as 1.32 mg/dL when my Tacrolimus is too high to a normal between 1.4 and 1.5.  BUN mg/dL is in the 14-18 range. Phosphorus level down below the normal level. PTH too high between 73 and 92, Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxy to low at 22.5 ng/mL. eGFR If NonAfricn Am just borderline at 56-62.

November 11, 2019, 12:35:45 PM »

I finally spoke to my transplants financial coordinator to ask about canceling Medicare early before I hit the three year mark (~9 months to go) as I have very good corporate insurance.  He said it might be ok to cancel part B, but then the transplant pills would not be covered.  I mentioned canceling it entirely so I don’t need to pay the high income adjusted Medicare payment and he generally said don’t do it.  The documentation hassle with my corporate insurance probably would not be worth it.  I think he might not have had experience with that but I do appreciate how easy it is to work with Medicare as primary and my insurance secondary.  Basic on that conversion I’ll keep paying for Medicare until the 3 year point.  However I still probably should have looked into this a year after transplant once things settled down – canceling at that time would have saved me well over $8k and would have been worth the insurance fight – but still I would have had to figure out how to get a defiant answer as far as my insurance taking over once Medicare was gone.