Saturday +64 (11:30 PM)

Today was another good day spent with the girls. They went to the hospital with us this morning for the daily Ganicyclovir treatment. While there, we received the results of the latest CMV test. It is still positive and at the same level as before. The viral load count was 2500. This is good since there was no increase due to lessening of her Ganicyclovir treatment from twice to once per day. I'm not certain why, but they didn't feel the current test was accurate. They are going to repeat the test on Monday. For whatever reason the nurse claimed the test needs to be conducted at exact 7 day intervals. This test was conducted at a 4 day interval. In any case, I think they will still conduct another test on Monday.

We will probably have another visit with the infectious disease doctor to determine what he wants to do. There are several possibilities. They could drop the levels of some of her anti-rejection drugs to allow her immune system to attempt to control the CMV. They could also use another, more potent, drug. The other drug has some more serious side effects and it requires more hospital time. Due to possible problems to kidneys they require a unit of fluids be given prior to the new-drug infusion and a unit of fluids following. The two units are designed to fully flush the kidneys. We will know more next week.

Jackie's blood counts were good today. In fact, given the high levels I'm surprised she didn't feel better. She fought nausea all day and finally had one episode of vomiting late this evening. This may have been due to the fact that her Scopolamine Transdermal patch wasn't changed today. The little round patch goes behind her ear and seems to work. In any case, we changed it this evening in hopes it would improve her nausea.

As I mentioned her counts were good. Her RBC (Hgl) was 10.7 which was up from yesterday's 9.9. Her WBC count decreased slightly to 2.6 from yesterday's 2.7. Her platelets were 186 which was an increase from yesterday's 125.

After the doctor's visit we took a long drive around the area. We took a drive to Winona and then on to Red Wing. We spent quite a lot of time driving along the Mississippi River.

Tonight the girls are dividing up the spoils of Jackie's makeup bag. You may recall the doctor's told us she could not use any makeup for the 100 days of the transplant. She was also told not to use any of her old makeup after the 100 days. It seems that makeup is chock full of bacteria. She was sad - and I cried when we got the news. I had some idea of the replacement cost:) In the end we decided to donate her makeup to a needy group. As it turned out, this happened to be Brittany and Tiffany! The photo above is them getting ready to divide the spoils!

Until Later....

Bruce and Jackie
From Rochester, MN