There’s no place like Home! Can’t believe 3 months have passed since the surgery and our arrival home. We wanted to post an update for our family and friends, especially for those who live far away.
We have been busy settling into our normal routine plus Eric’s new routine with medications, blood test, and trying to keep his ferocious appetite satisfied. He gets very hungry, the prednisone effect. He has put on some weight and is looking great.
Everything is going pretty well. His blood tests are now drawn once a week on Mondays. But there has been a few times where his creatinine has gone up and he had to have that test repeated. The creatinine has been fluctuating since his surgery.
He attended the Heart Connection’s “Sibling” Cancer camp at Boone in August. We arranged blood work to be done at the local hospital. That was one of the times when the lab draws had to be unexpectedly repeated. The camp has a health lodge, so luckily Nurse Phil; aka, Murse Phil, was able to draw that specific test there and have someone run the tube into the hospital lab. Luckily the creatinine level went down.
School started August 20th and Eric is able to attend classes like normal again. He gets labs done just before school. During the last one, September 2, once again he had to have the creatinine repeated the next day. If it did not go down, we were going to have to make an early trip to Mayo. So on Sept. 3, Eric’s 18th birthday, he had to go to our local hospital lab to have the creatinine tested again. It went down from 2.2 to 2.1.
4 days later, on September 7th, we made the trip to Mayo for our scheduled 3-month check-ups for both Eric and myself. Eric had lots of blood test, visits with the doctors at the transplant center, and the scheduled kidney biopsy. They took him to surgery around 1:30 and he returned an hour later. The recovery time was less then two hours, then he was dismissed so we could return to the hotel.
Here’s what we learned the next day at the follow-up doctor visit. The biopsy returned good results, there are no signs of rejection! The doctors also adjusted some of his medications to try to resolve the issues with his white blood cell count and the creatinine levels. He’ll continue with weekly blood draws for while.
It is a relief to know there are no signs of kidney rejection, which was the best news to hear!
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