Saturday +17 (11:30 AM)

We returned to the hospital this morning. Jackie will be getting 3 infusions of IV antibiotics per day for awhile. I'm not certain how long this will last, but probably until she stops running a fever.

She fought fevers all night long. It once again rose to over 104 at about 4:00 AM. Tylenol brought it back down. We are trying a schedule of giving her Tylenol every 3 hours.

As a result of the antibiotics she is losing her hearing. The doctors don't know if this is permanent. It seems that some of the antibiotics cause this. As for how much of her hearing she has lost, it seems to be a lot. She is certainly more hard-of-hearing than I am. The TV has to be fairly loud for her to hear it. She cannot hear the "beep" when the thermometer signals it has stopped measuring temperature. The doctors say that if her hearing comes back it will certainly take weeks and probably months.

We are scheduled back at the hospital at 2:00 and again at 8:30 this evening. So far she has not been able to walk. I had to push her in the wheelchair. Hopefully her energy level will improve soon.

The doctors think her fever could be drug induced or possibly as a result of CMV. CMV is short for Cyto-Megalo-Virus. It is a type of herpes virus. CMV can affect almost any organ and cause almost any type of infection. The majority of the population is positive for CMV virus (somewhere between 50 and 90% depending upon who you talk to). Jackie was CMV positive. Her donor was CMV negative. From what I gather, when the white cells begin to produce again the CMV can become active again due to her compromised immune system. If the problem is CMV she will be placed on a new, and different antibiotic. The recovery from CMV can be rather lengthy and present a lot of problems, or as with most of these things it can be very minor. We'll just have to wait and see.

Until later,
Bruce and Jackie
From Rochester, MN