Here’s a little update on what has been going on with Mom the past couple months. 

Overall, she’s been doing great. She got a gym membership, she’s been out walking when able, and loving being able to keep up with her grandkids. We have hit a little bump in the road that I’ll explain with a little background. That bump is that Mom has an active CMV infection. 

CMV stands for cytomegalovirus. It is a common virus from the herpes family that a good majority of the population has been exposed to at some point in their lifetime. Most people with healthy immune systems will never know they are infected. They get infected, their body fights it, and then keeps the virus dormant. Mom had never been exposed, but her donor had. So, from the beginning she was placed on an antiviral called Valcyte to help prevent infection. After 6 months with no detectable virus, she was taken off the medication and they would check her levels of virus every 2 weeks for 2 months.

 The virus became active a few weeks ago and they put her back on Valcyte. Unfortunately, the valcyte wasn’t working. On Thursday, I took her to meet with an infectious disease doctor. (He was great by the way) He determined that her body wasn’t absorbing the valcyte like it should so she needed to be switched to an IV medication. She would also need to decrease one of her anti-rejection meds to help her body learn to fight the infection. Yesterday, she got a PICC line placed in her arm and received a dose of the new medication. 

At her appointment yesterday she also learned that her white blood cell count was pretty much non-existent. Even though they want your immune system suppressed to prevent rejection, too much suppression can have its own host of issues. To combat that, they took her completely off one of the anti-rejection meds, and are having her give herself injections for 3 days of med to boost her immune system. 

We are hoping all of this is just a small bump in the road and everything continues to go smoothly. 

Until next time,

Marissa