Slow but steady ...

Another pause between posts as there never seems to be enough hours in the day!

Let's start with the good news: Elizabeth's white blood cell and neutrophil counts continue to rise, and the various blood cultures are all coming back negative. We need these patterns to continue, and hopefully add more markers such as platelets and red blood cells. Until we see those, Elizabeth continues to get transfusions of platelets and red blood cells.

Elizabeth's biggest challenges right now are adjusting her high expectations and accepting the fact that she still has a way to go before she can leave the hospital or return to Edmonton. She's very emotional right now, and understandably so! She wasn't sent to ICU because they wanted to clean the floors in her room!

She got sent to ICU because the transplant unit was not able to stabilize the variations in her fever, pulse and blood pressure. ICU has a wider range of stronger drugs available to them, as well as some pretty cool equipment (yep, I'm a nerd). Elizabeth's condition was serious. They called us down from Edmonton, and we spent a pretty long Victoria Day weekend taking turns by her bedside. She was on a dizzying array of medicines to control bacterial, viral and fungal infections; pulse and blood pressure;pain and anxiety. She remembers bits and pieces of her time there, and she's adamant that she's not returning!

Now that she's back on the unit, she wants to dazzle everyone with her rapid recovery and be out the door as soon as possible. If this were a movie, we would have  snippets of her walking and doing physio ending with a smiling Elizabeth walking out of the hospital and climbing into a convertible with David.

Unfortunately, this is not a movie. Elizabeth has some hard work in the weeks ahead. Yesterday, the warden let use spring her for a few hours. All we did was go down to the apartment and back up, but it was hard on her. There were three of us assisting her, and it's frustrating for her to realize her limitations.

She's still not ready for friends to visit, but your prayers, cards and letters are all greatly appreciated. I will try to post more regularly, but don't expect a lot of detail about ICU. It was a rough time for all of us, but especially Elizabeth. We're not going to relive it for a blog post!

As always, thank you all for the kind wishes, cards and prayers. They mean a great deal to Elizabeth.

Michael