Tuesday, September 06, 2011

7 weeks since transplant and counting

Nope we are not leaving the hospital just yet. Amaey still keeps spiking fevers so they did a full body scan yesterday and the results were negative. This is great news that all is well in there but it also means we still have no idea what is causing the fevers.

My friend Annada whose son had a cord blood transplant said something eye opening, the stage at which our boys have reached we are going to hear, 'we don't know what is going on' lot more from the doctors.
It's true that they are among the elite few that are experiencing science at it's best. Stem cell transplant was so controversial in the Bush era, he stopped funding for the same. Scientists and doctors are still figuring out how all of this works but they won't know more until more people have been experimented on. They need data and facts but they don't have a lot of data. And frankly each body is so unique. Someone that has a mis-match donor might sail through recovery while a 10-10 match might still be in the hospital with undetectable symptoms. It truly is a miracle to have such a transplant available but it is very frustrating when you are on the receiving end when the cause of fever is perplexing.

I do understand the depth of intricacies involved, his symptoms could be GVHD or viral. If it is GVHD then they can start treating it with steroids however steroids mask fever so if it is viral the fevers will be gone and the viral will still be looming at large. So they cannot treat him as GVHD as yet until they have conclusive results.

Since the scans were -ve, tomorrow they will do an endoscopy of his upper and lower gut. They also need to do a biopsy of the bump on his chest but dermatology is not available so now they are trying to nail them down. Hopefully they will have completed all tests on him by tomorrow and get results by Friday which means we are definitely here until next Monday.

Mary Claire stopped by with her two boys, Apurva said Amaey was really itchy but playing the PS3 with Raffi and Gabe was a great distraction. He said having them over brought about a little change in the rooms atmosphere and anything that could distract Amaey from the itch was awesome.

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