Day +43: More milestones!

Despite my best attempts to get her sick yesterday, Mina Brigitta had a great day today. She had seven bites of oatmeal this morning, and showed interest in food at other times. One big milestone was that she asked to draw babies for the first time since getting sick. She didn't actually draw any babies herself, but she had Keri draw babies for a while and she used the little moon- and star-shaped stamps that came with her magna-doodle. Another milestone is that she came over and sat on the daybed with her brother for the first time. She was showing him pictures from her little picture albums and telling him who everyone was. She even laughed at him, when Anta Kari was feeding him some pita bread. She seems to want to talk a lot these days. Maybe she's just reconnecting with the world, or maybe somehow her brain has continued to mature through all of this, but she seems like she's ready for more communication than her limited vocabulary can handle. Time to work on some new words.

I, of course, missed all of it because I didn't dare go near the hospital after yesterday. I was flat on my back all day yesterday with nausea, diarrhea, and a low-grade fever of about 100.5. I woke up feeling much better but am still not totally right, and the doctors said to stay away as long as I'm having symptoms. Hopefully I didn't infect Mina Brigitta with some kind of virus, because her defenses are really quite low right now and any kind of infection would be quite serious. I'm hoping to be back up at the hospital tomorrow night. We're so thankful that Kari and Steve were here and were able to extend their flights. They both stayed at the hospital last night, and Kari is up there again tonight. I'm not sure what we'd have done without them.

Mina Brigitta still is having low-grade fevers as well, but she's been having them for a couple of weeks and she certainly isn't acting like I felt, so she doesn't seem infected at the moment. They're continuing to slowly taper down her steroids and her morphine. She receives doses of daclizumab tomorrow and infiximab on Thursday. Dr. Horn wants to have her on a sustainable dose of steroids by Thursday. The worry is that reducing the steroids could cause a resurgence of the GVHD, which is why they're moving slowly and observing her carefully. We'll just have to watch and see.