What a full day. Thank you so much for all your encouraging and supportive and loving notes.
There is good news and not so good news. At the moment, Nancy is doing well, she sounded perky enough on the phone to make comments about the design and organization of the hospital ward.
Which is the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. Tonight she transferred there because she was experiencing "atrial fibrillation", a 200-beat-per-minute, temporary heart condition that can be life-threatening. It's probably a side effect of an infection. I'm not as worried as I was last night, when she was experiencing hallucinations and was very weak. Now she seems back to her usual self.
Read on only if you want the medical data. There are really four things going on all at once. Everything seems to be stable or improving this evening.
1. Her GVHD is steadily getting better. She is still on a ton of prednisone for it.
2. It turns out that the liver test results, tremors, and the hallucinations were apparently happening because the level of one of her immunosuppressive drugs (tachrolimus) got too high in her blood. They stopped the drug to bring the level back down, and these things are improving. No more confusion or hallucinations since this morning. She still has tremors, but they aren't as bad.
3. She still has the septic infection that put her in the hospital three weeks ago. It created a small encapsulation somewhere in her body, probably in her back muscles, and spread over the last few days. It has now created an abscess in her spine, that is impacting her upper body. She is on IV Vancomycin for it, and they are talking about neurosurgery to drain the abscess tomorrow.
4. The infection is probably the source of atrial fib, which is now under control. Her doctors and nurses said she was doing fine, and they have her in the ICU so they can monitor her heart.
I plan to keep sending out daily updates until she is clearly on her way out of the hospital. Much love to all of you,
-tdc
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