It's been a while since a Grace update, but the news is good, as the family is settling back into life together. Here's what the Daleys wrote—for pictures you can check out their blog.
As they say, no news is good news. Not much exciting has been going on lately. Grace is eating a fairly regular diet at meals, which has always been pretty small. Yesterday, she drank a lot, which hasn't been common for her, so we give her 600ml of water via her NG tube, 50ml every hour throughout the day. She gets 2 bottles of baby formula 50ml/hour throughout the day, which means she doesn't have to be on the pump at night, which is nice for everyone involved.
We thought she had c-diff last week, as the symptoms returned shortly after getting off the antibiotic, but the test came back negative, and her symptoms have mostly resolved, so perhaps it was just related to a switch from magnesium sulfate to magnesium oxide for a few days due to it being impossible to get from a pharmacy within an hour of us. Heather had to crush up the pills and make a solution herself, which you would have thought a pharmacy could do... But, she is back on her regular magnesium sulfate now, and we just have to remember to schedule and pickup a few medications at the Dana Farber pharmacy when we go for weekly clinic visits.
Jon has returned to work, with mostly regular hours. The family is happy to be back together and enjoying conversation and games and just regular life together.
Grace has a bone marrow aspirate scheduled for tomorrow, to verify that everything is working as it should, and we expect those results to be good. She'll get another one around day 100 and that is the next milestone we are looking forward to, as she should be able to get off cyclosporine at that point, which causes lots of side-effects, so the other medications can stop soon after that.
One such side effect that we had heard about but she had not experienced until this week is that she is growing hair on her face and ears, so think of a combination of teenager peach fuzz and old man hairy ears and eyebrows, and you'll have a good idea of what it looks like.
Grace often asks if the baby is awake and likes to feel its kicks. Heather has been feeling pretty big, and measurements confirm it and there is a question if there are any tests to do (glucose or an ultrasound). We've been joking about whether there is a hidden twin, but we're pretty sure there isn't.
The BMA mentioned for "tomorrow" was yesterday. She's never minded them before, but this time they had to poke her twice, so she's a little sore. The hair-in-unwanted-places story reminds me of the well-known fact that a dieting woman will lose weight from her bust sooner and faster than from her hips....
