Jasmine Stalker-Firth

Yesterday, the blood cultures showed that she has an infection most likely from the wound (before or after surgery is hard to tell) so she was given specific antibiotics to treat this infection and hopefully she will be back home with us in a few days.

The transplant surgeon who performed Jasmine’s transplant happened to be on the ward to see another patient but kindly popped by and explained that the combination of Jasmine being malnourished due to her illness even with all the aggressive nutrition management she has had, the steroids (which prevent healing), and the size of her wound, and the new enormous (for her) kidney, all contributed to a weak part of the wound splitting open.

Jasmine has gone 36 hours without a temperature so that is good and she was looking much better and enjoying all the attention she gets. She is showing some interest in food – mainly biscuits. I tried her with a sausage yesterday but she just licked it, snapped it in half, and threw it on the floor. She only seems to like snack-a-jacks, chocolate, and biscuits. The nurses have tried her on all sorts: yoghurt, cheese, chips, gravy, mash, spaghetti hoops, but she is sticking to her biscuits and crisps.

I have spent so long just trying to get her to eat anything at all, and anything she did eat was such a revelation that the idea now of giving her a balanced diet seems so strange. As strange as the idea of life after transplant.

We spent so long thinking about transplant, and getting to it, that life post-transplant had never even entered our heads. Luckily, there have been some lovely teenagers on the ward who have shown us how they lead normal lives with this condition and that has helped us see that life goes on, which is great.

Calista has been just fabulous throughout these weeks. You can pick her out of the cot and put her in the sling or buggy and dash out into the night. You can feed her at random times and stop mid-feed and start again later and she goes with the flow. As long as she has the space to roll about and sing to herself, she is happy and has made everything much easier. She has also been a great comfort to me in those scary moments that are part of a big event such as transplant.

Neil is still uncomfortable today, but is starting to look so much better.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 10:58 am and is filed under home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.