Home at last :)
Grace was discharged from Children’s Hospital last night and was very happy to sleep in her own bed, but happier not to wake up with a blood draw from her arm. Her dialysis is going fine and she’s feeling much better now that some of her lab values have returned to normal. If it gets to be too long between dialysis sessions, she begins to feel pretty sleepy and nauseous. She’s had almost all of her dialysis sessions during the day for our training, but now we need to switch her to nighttime treatments. The supplies needed for this are extensive, so Todd and I have much organizing to do, and we’ll do our best to keep Grace’s room from looking like a hospital.
So things seem to be returning to normal, or an altered version of what used to be normal at least. Grace’s spirits were pretty low after a few days in the hospital, but she seems much happier now that she’s home.
Grace’s doctors plan on the next few months being a normalizing period where she can get into a daily routine and become as healthy as she can be. It won’t be long before we can begin typing/cross-matching people for kidney donation. Many people have asked about that, and the first requirement is to have a matching blood type. Grace is O+ and so am I. It’s a very common type, so finding a match that way shouldn’t be too difficult. The next step is to see how many of the 6 HLA markers match (kids recieve 3 from each parent), and the last step is to do tissue compatibility/cross-matching. All this test involves is to mix Grace’s blood with the possible donor’s blood and watch for a reaction. This is all a few months away, but I hope I’ve answered at least a few questions.
Thank you to everyone who has helped with caring for our girls while we were consumed with everything. Thank you also for all the gifts, calls, prayers, etc. we have gotten from so many of you.
Angie