Monday, October 20, 2008

One down....

We went up to Cedars Sinai last Friday to begin Dave's anti-rejection therapy. Amazingly, this is the only place in the Western United States that does this therapy! People come from all over hoping to make it through the program and qualify for this particular antibody treatment. We are so blessed to be not only part of the program (yes, it is considered a medical trial), but to have the doctor who created this therapy as one of Dave's nephrologists. Again, God is blessing us, greatly!

We began the day by meeting with one of the research doctors who spoke about statistics to both of of us regarding the trial and success rates, etc. (Like we have an option at this point?!?) She was extremely helpful, and explained to us that while Dave's cross match with the donor is not perfect, there's a good chance that they can tweak his immune system enough so as to make the transplant take. Good news! *Stats have not been our friend throughout this adventure, so we would rather rely on God's power of intervention than on science's manipulation, alone. God has gotten Dave this far, so we will trust that He will get us through the rest of this process.

Dave received the 'good' antibodies through dialysis. He felt fine, afterwards. No difference, at all. They are synthetic, but there is still a chance for allergic reaction~ so they watched him closely for four hours.

The worst part of the day was hitting the 10 FWY at La Cienega at 4:30PM, Friday! It took us two hours to get home, going a steady pace of 20mph for much of the trip! Man, I hate LA traffic!

The Myfortic (immune suppressant oral medication) was started this weekend, and he's had no ill effects from that, either. Yay!

On October 30, Dave will get an infusion of a Chemo drug to further ring down his immune system. Then one more antibody infusion on November 12, a week before his 'tentative' surgery.

Yeah, I said 'tentative'. Because if by some chance his cross match is still positive (which is bad), then we can't do the transplant. Please join us in giving this back to God, and trusting that He will allow everything to go forward, enabling Dave's surgery on November 18, as scheduled.

2 comments:

Rachel Ricchio said...

good luck with things! i'll be checking in every now and then. did you ever get the sitter thing figured out? i really hope my sister's friend pulled through!

Lisa said...

Hey Rachel. Yeah Vanessa got in touch with me and I spoke to her friend. I decided to go with someone a bit more local so they could have a few days with the boys prior to that BIG week when I will be mostly gone. I appreciate all the help! You guys are super!!