I'm sitting in a treatment room at the Transplant Center this afternoon as we have combined a couple of appointments for the First Mate and eaten up most of the afternoon here. I haven't posted an FM update in quite a while, mostly because not much has changed. She still hasn't required any additional insulin since the days after her release from the hospital, and her blood levels for kidney function have been the best since ... well, since I've known her. She's completely off of blood-pressure medication now -- she used to take three different hypertension meds in combination to get it under control -- and her appetite has even improved a little.

Unfortunately, her anemia has returned, and she needs iron infusions via IV for the next few weeks, which is one of the reasons we're here today. She has a nasty cough that she picked up from someone, and although her chest X-ray came back clean, the center wanted a CT scan to be sure she doesn't have pneumonia. The doctor will probably prescribe a big ol' dose of Cipro for the next few days if the CT scan doesn't show anything, and hopefully that will take care of the cough, because neither one of us has gotten much sleep this week.

In fact, last night I started losing my voice and picking up a lighter version of her cough, and today I have total laryngitis. I started calling myself the Hoarse Whisperer in the office this morning on e-mail (since I couldn't answer my phone), and I'm afraid I may miss my NARN appearance on Saturday unless it improves greatly over the next 36 hours. I did miss an opportunity to join Hugh Hewitt on today's show, which kills me because working with Hugh and Duane is about as much fun as one can have while avoiding illegality, and that's the truth. Be sure to tune in Hugh to hear what I missed.

We'll be here another couple of hours, so I may get more blogging time in this afternoon. The iron infusion just finished, but maybe they'll let the FM just sleep in the bed until the doctor comes to see her.

UPDATE: The CT scan didn't go all that well. The radiologist saw some fluid in the FM's right lung, so she'll need a bronchoscopy tomorrow to determine what kind of infection she's got going. It's an all-day kind of test, so our "second son" will take her in the morning and I'll pick her up in the afternoon when she's done. It's likely either bronchitis or a mild form of pneumonia, and the test should tell us which by Monday. The doctors don't feel that this is anything to get panicked about, but once they know what it is, they can treat it correctly.

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Tracked on May 4, 2005 4:34 PM