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Lindsay, I'm sure they have checked you for diabetes - a fasting blood glucose - right? That is the most common cause of microalbumine. Your elevated microalbumin is indicative of some kidney damage - and as you know, you have some. As long as the creatinine is within normal limits, you are OK. But they are right, you need to be checked frequently. There are many things that can cause your microalbumin to go up like illness, antibiotics, high blood pressure (is yours normal?) heck maybe even stress (not sure about that one). I have kidney damage too from having multiple UTIs when I was little. I don't even know if they check my microalbumin - I've never had a doc tell me anything about mine - I'll have to look at my next lab report. They keep an eye on my creatinine and BUN (blood urea nitrogen) and they are at the upper limits of normal - but OK.
The thing is that you can live with LOTS of kidney damage and be perfectly fine. Gary's kidney function is only 23% of normal and he is fine. You are OK until your kidney function gets down to 15%. So it takes LOTS of damage to really cause problems. The thing is you just can't let it progress and that is why they have to check it frequently. As long as you get your tests when they tell you to, and stay on top of any changes, you should be OK.
OK, Gary sees his kidney doc every 3 months and has blood drawn to check his kidneys. I was curious to see if he gets a microalbumin test and he does not - but it could be that his kidneys are already so damaged, they don't bother with it. The tests he does get are:
Urine protein
Urine creatinine
Urine creatinine clearance
blood creatinine
BUN
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 Gayle
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