Home Sweet Home

Although Joy was discharged, pain continues and intensity better controlled but at the cost of increased nausea / discomfort.

She had two options: 1) Undergo another spine surgery NOW or 2) utilize the back brace and continue with pain management for a couple weeks to see if fracture heals by itself. She is giving number 2 a try.

September trip to Duke is in question. This appointment is critical but could be rescheduled for the following month but tremendous risk is involved should she not be able to go in October. The rejection / infection has to be closely monitored since it is possible her body will not display any apparent symptoms. Bronch and biopsy are the only way to diagnose.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Sunday Night Update

Doctors are trying to avoid another spinal surgery by using a back brace device, lots of rest and limited activity coupled with still rather strong narcotic pain meds. As we understand, the compression fractures are extremely painful and do not go away quickly.

So the PLAN is to possibly discharge her tomorrow and revisit the doctor in a couple weeks. The doctor will then do another MRI and determine then if the bone is healing and how she is managing the pain. That visit SHOULD decide whether spine surgery is required.

Is our Duke trip mid-September in jeopardy????

Another Fracture

Joy learned late this afternoon that she has another compression fracture in her spine at T11 which is just above previous fracture at T12.

Remedy? Hopefully will learn something tomorrow.

Number Nine

For the ninth time in a little over a year, Joy is back in the hospital, this time for the intense back pain issues again. The IV injections of narcotics helped last night but she can't stay on those addictive and potentially harmful drugs forever.

If these doctors are unable to determine a viable solution, then we will head south. I guess we are so accustomed to speedy resolution, minimal delays in testing procedures and efficient scheduling for doctor appointments that we are expecting to much. But then again, I don't think so. Granted, Joy has had numerous post-transplant issues like so many others that we know but it was nothing Duke had done wrong, it was merely these patients bodies responding differently to the tremendous side effects of lung transplantation. But in the final analysis, we are spoiled not to have the diagnostics and world class doctors at our immediate disposal.

But.............................we will see.

Update

Intense backpain continues with minimal relief despite continued and additional narcotic medicatiions. Bone density scan did not reveal a specific new fracture since surgery for the compression fracture. She continues bedrest and virtually limited activity. Follow up doctor appointment later this week.

Where do we go from here????????????????????????????????