Day 167

Josh informed me that my posts are way too technical and hard to understand, so I'm going to try keep the post simple this time.

Jacob had another echocardiogram today which showed that the fluid around his heart looks about the same. I was hoping it would start looking better now that he's been off a couple of his more dangerous medications for a week, but I guess the good news is that it hasn't gotten worse. The doctors are thinking that it is probably a viral infection at this point. We go back for another echocardiogram on October 1st.

Jacob's blood work showed some improvement, so it looks like for now we will not have to go back to Seattle any time soon. The doctor decreased the dose size of a couple of medications to see how he does, so we will hopefully be able to come off of all immunosuppression in about a week and a half. Also, Seattle received the slides from Jacob's gut biopsies and confirmed what Kaiser had already told us about Jacob's gut not having any gvhd.

Jacob did well with his electrolytes on 5 nights of iv hydration this week, so we are decreasing him to 3 nights a week and will hopefully be done with that entirely in a couple of weeks. I'm hoping after that we can get his central line removed. That hardware coming out of his chest has been a part of him for 18 months. It's going to be strange and wonderful to not worry about caring for it any more. I'm sure it will take some getting used to for Jacob, too. He's had it for as long as he can remember.

So all in all, I think Jacob is moving in the right direction. It's just going to take him a long, long time to clear the virus that he is fighting.