Day +38: trading Antas

Anta Teri flew out today, and Anta Kari flew in. It's always sad to see Teri go, but it will be nice to spend some time with Kari, who we don't get to see quite as often. Uncle Steve is even rumored to be making a cameo appearance later on this week! Today is also our brother Eric's 42nd birthday. I know it will be tomorrow when you read this, but Happy Birthday Eric, from Kari and me!

Mina Brigitta had a quiet day today back in our old room. And when I say quiet, I mean very very quiet. She's pretty much been in a deep sleep since Saturday, deep enough to cause us to worry a bit. She does wake up from time to time particularly for diaper changes, and today she screamed bloody murder when they put her in the machine for a CT scan. She's just lucid enough when she wakes up that the doctors are sure she's not having any kind of neurological problems. They say it's common for kids to sleep a lot when they're recovering from a serious injury or illness. The sleepiness did seem to coincide with switching from Benedryl to a more potent drug named Atarax to control nausea and itching. We should probably just count our blessings that she can spend these days sleeping and healing when she still is quite uncomfortable with her rash. But we're too fresh from the ICU to relax just yet.

There are still some mixed signals, but for the most part things are looking pretty good. She went 30 hours between stools yesterday, and about 18 hours today, and the volume is lower. However, she did have a few spots of fresh blood in her stool tonight, which she hasn't had recently. She's continued to have low-grade fevers, but nothing very severe. It's common for burn victims to have a high temperature, so it's possible she's having a similar kind of reaction. They're drawing blood and urine cultures daily and monitoring her very closely for any sign of infection. The best news from today was that the CT scan came back clean. I didn't get the whole story, but the spot on her lungs didn't look like an infection. She received another dose of Daclizumab yesterday, and will receive Infliximab on Thursday. If she still looks good then, they'll begin tapering off her steroids very slowly. Let's hope we stay on this path.