Wow! I JUST talked to my doctor about this today. I told him that urine tests had been finding small amounts of protein in my urine since I was 12. Was that a sign of kidney problems? Was it a reason to lower protein?

He said that, if I'd had this problem all my life, it was most likely "just me." In other words, I had something happen as a kid that caused a small amount of damage to my kidneys - enough to put a small amount of protein in my urine for life - but I've lived with the problem for 30-some years SINCE it first registered. Ergo, whatever the problem was, it hasn't seriously impacted my health and isn't a reason to worry NOW.

He's going to do a baseline protein test at some point in the future (after my TOM) which will test a 24-hour collection - not to see if there's a problem now, so much as to have a total which can be compared with future readings. If, years down the road, my protein starts increasing, we'll know that the diabetes is causing kidney damage. (All tests of my kidneys up till now have shown them to be healthy and strong.)

Anyway, if you're concerned about kidney damage, maybe you could arrange for this 24-hour collection test, too.