Let's start with the good news, Sue is on the mend.
The last month or two has been a series of connected illnesses and torments that have kept Sue less than well. And actually the string of problems were caused by issues well over a year ago. Sue had three problems that came about due to the leukemia treatment (and the disease itself), first was anemia for which Sue received many blood transfusions, second was the harsh chemotherapy that made finding veins tougher for nurses, and getting a difficult to completely get rid of GI infection while in the hospital.
So because the blood transfusions left with way to much iron, Sue needed to give back blood. In order to give blood, Sue needed to get a permanent port placed, because her poor veins were insufficient to draw blood. And due to a skin infection by an incision made while have the port placed. And to get rid to the skin infection, Sue took a powerful antibiotic, which in turn killed off much the of the good bacteria and gave the bad bacteria a chance to succeed causing a GI infection to come back. So now Sue needed to take new antibiotics for her GI tract infection. Then one of the two antibiotics caused a serious fully body skin rash.
Finally things seem to be getting back to normal. All these things would be bad enough on their own, but what made the whole thing worse is that the skin rash looked like a rash caused by GVHD (graft versus host disease). Fortunately the skin biopsy pretty much ruled that out, as GVHD can be a serious long term problem as well an acute danger. I think that Sue has come to the end of the spectacular string of illnesses and can get back the run of the mill recovery she had been having.
Comments