I have posted this question before without a response. My sister has lupus but not this particular problem. Does anyone have nephritis? How early did it start? What did they do for it?

Erin

Yep. Membranous glomularnephritis (sp?). When did it start? Who knows? The doctors certainly don't, and I don't have a clue. First outward lupus symptoms date to October of 2003, so maybe then. But I suspect I have had this for around a decade. Totally silent. I actually thought they must be kidding to say my kidneys were damaged. No pain, no discomfort, no urinary symptoms, no nothing. If your doctor recommends it, do the biopsy. These things scare people, scared me half to death, but the cold hard fact is that if lab tests show something significant going on with your kidneys, this is the only way to get concrete information on the state of what has happened to them and it will help to know how you should be treated to prevent or at least slow future deterioration.

Sorry if I repeat something you have already told us about your treatment. Initially, you will likely be offered prednisone, which will work on all those wbc, casts, and other stuff you have going on in your urine. That is, unless your labs are way off the chart or you are having severe symptoms in other parts of your body, in which case they may recommend going ahead with the chemotherapy drugs from the start. In the short term, prednisone is relatively harmless, so if you are lucky, a good dose tapered off over a few weeks or even months may jolt the kidneys into remission. I have read accounts of this, so it does happen. If the first round of steriods don't do the trick, then they will probably want a combination of a low maintenance dosage of prednisone along with one of the chemo drugs or just a chemo drug alone.

I truly wish you the best as you make these choices. God bless.

Thank you for your reply. I know they said I have a large amount of white blood cells, I have blood and casts. I am wondering if the casts are what I have been seeing in my urine. Large things that look like rice. I have not had a clean urine sample in a year or so. I always just thought it was a kidney infection and that is how they treated it, but it never went away. This last time the test was pretty bad so they kept monitoring it and I have been running a fever pretty consistantly. My back and joints hurt, but the urologist thinks it is not connected to the kidney problem. More the underlying problem. He also said that I dont have an infection, which was confirmed the next day after my GP got the culture that he finally ordered back and there was no growth. So now I am just praying it is kidney stones if you can believe that! I didnt even think the lupus was likely till my last bloodwork came back with a positive Anti Ro. He also doesnt believe it is my bladder since I dont have the burning. Right now I am just keeping my fingers crossed.

Erin