Ups And Downs

Hey everybody, remember me? It's been a while. Sorry for the lapse, we've been busy!

As of late, there have been a few setbacks worth mentioning. Thankfully, the doctors don't think the issues are extremely problematic at this point. The doctors have and will continue to monitor Terri on an ongoing basis to watch how her body is accepting the "new addition". They discovered a blockage in Terri's ureter and had to perform a relatively quick surgery to put in a stent. The ureter (medical term) is a tube (not a medical term) attached from the kidney that carries urine to the bladder. I think I heard the time frame for the surgery would be around 20 minutes, but doesn't a cavity sometimes take longer than that to fix? Now, I'm no medical person and I don't watch Grey's Anatomy, but that seems pretty speedy. Perhaps I misheard the time. Regardless, the surgery went well with no problems.

This past Friday, we had a scare as Terri's creatinine levels were exceeding the expected levels. A normal functioning body maintains a pretty consistent creatinine level. As it's a chemical byproduct from muscles which gets filtered out of the blood by the kidneys, it's one of the most important components regularly measured both pre and post-op. They asked Kelly to come in and get lab work done immediately in an attempt to determine the cause of this fluctuation. They needed to determine if it was an infection of some sort or her body rejecting the new kidney.

To make a long story shorter, they now believe that her body was trying to reject it. I was told that this can initially happen even when the matches are good and despite Terri taking anti-rejection medication daily for the rest of her life. I suppose daily pill requirements are the price to pay for a procedure of this nature. They believe that Terri has turned the corner on this latest episode, and her creatinine levels have since moderated. Please keep her in your thoughts.

Kelly continues to get better and better. After a few sleepless nights which may have been due to her medication, she FINALLY slept last night! Even in my sleep, I was feeling bad for her having to watch (if that's what you call it) the dreadful programming of late, late, late night TV. In addition, she is becoming much more mobile and is getting around much better.

Sorry for the long post- a lot has happened as you can see. If interested, keep reading as I have some news on a benefit gig we'll be playing in July! Take care...