I just returned from visiting the First Mate, and she sends her greetings to everyone and thanks you all for the kind thoughts and prayers. She is still feeling poorly and it appears she will be in the hospital for a few days.

We had some good news and bad news today. The hospital did CT scans of her head, chest, and abdomen, and they found nothing unusual in terms of abcesses or infections. That resolved the big worry about an acute infection that could overwhelm her system; it looks like that isn't the case.

The bad news -- and it's not that bad -- is that she has a cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection. This is not unusual among transplant patients when their immune systems get overly suppressed. Many people carry CMV but while healthy will never develop symptoms. This is far more dangerous for babies than it is for adults, but it still feels like a really bad case of the flu when symptomatic. Unfortunately, the "cure" is two weeks of IV treatments, followed by up to three months of anti-virals, and the immune suppression drugs have to get cut back -- which can put the FM's pancreas at risk if not watched very, very carefully.

Bottom line: she probably will be in the hospital all weekend, which will put a severe damper on the Little Admiral's birthday party this weekend. I'll keep everyone in the loop until then.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry is