Hi Marjolein!
Anna is feeling better. It's amazing how quickly the solumedrol kicked in in making her feel better. The docs told her she'd start feeling better as quick as a day after her first dose was done.
It was a bit of a surprise but it lingers in the back of your mind when they can't figure it out very quickly what's going on.
Anna didn't have any respiratory symptoms, as all. Nothing. In fact they said she sounded good. But because of the fevers she'd been running off and on. Low grade but still a fever in the eyes of the transplant world. When they took the x-ray they saw it all. It looked horrible. Anna has always looked at her x-rays and really studied them. Her docs stayed in constant contact with the transplant clinic at Stanford and a bronch was what they wanted. They did a biopsy and sent it to Stanford. But all the initial tests for everything came back negative. That's when Anna said she started feeling like it was rejection. After the bronch she started having resp. issues, like shortness of breath and her O2sats were like 88. It took about a day for them to return to 96. And she had excruciating headaches. By day 6 everyone was in agreement that she should go back to Stanford and she was airvac'd to CA. They repeated the bronch, just to take a look, and still everything was looking neg. It wasn't until the very last test came back that it was declared rejection. They wouldn't say what level that first day. I think maybe the fellow was waiting for the attending to tell us that it was A4.
The scary part is that she felt fine until after the first bronch. Well respiratory wise anyway. She'd felt off and on nauseasness and that intermitent fever. It was running 101'ish.
When we asked them what happened, why??? She takes her medicine on time every single day, has never ever missed a dose, wears her mask in the hospital, and stays away from sick people as best she can. That was it though... They told us that after the first year, rejection is most usually triggered by illness/virus. Well, apparently, there was a girl in one of Anna's classes that was hacking just the week before and that is who/what we are suspecting happened. Even though Anna didn't actually get sick from whatever she had, what little immune system she has kicked in to fight it off and at the same time was alerted to her non-issued lungs.
They feel very confident that the 500mg of solumedrol for three days did the trick. We saw the x-ray they took a week later and it looks 50% better! In just 3 days after she finished the solumedrol! They were amazed that her lungs would look so much better so quickly. We go back the third week of November for a repeat bronch. to make sure is all gone. Fingers crossed for a good report.
Thanks so much for asking. I hope I didn't put too much detail.
