Steps Forward and Back

     After 2 days off the ventilator and blood-pressure sustaining medications,  Ruth ended back on the ventilator and back on blood-pressure sustaining medicines due to a big bleed from the GI tract and bleeding into both lungs.  She bled enough from the GI tract where they instituted a "massive transfusion protocol," often used for big bleeds from trauma.  This fortunately stabilized her.  I was not there, but her mom was and it was apparently quite frightening to witness.  Her lungs started bleeding too, and at first the ICU team thought she had the recurrence of her diagnosis of Diffuse Alveolar Hemorrhage (DAH) due to bone marrow transplant from 6 wks ago; but now they think she's just oozing blood into her air sacs due to poor clotting and low platelets.  All this bleeding is in the background of inflammation from her ongoing battle with adenovirus.  I will take this type of bleeding over the former for reasons I'm not going to get into, other than the fact most don't survive the former. They also detected bacterial staph infection in her lungs as well still.  Other studies are pending.  This time she's only been on minimal vent settings and on-off blood pressure supporting medicines, so unlike the dire circumstances of 10 days ago.  

    Because Ruth seemingly keeps taking a step forward, then two steps back over the past month-or two, even in the ICU, so the doctors held a family conference meeting yesterday.  They can't predict what will happen with Ruth, but they've seen bone marrow transplants in this situation, and they can't promise she'll make it out of the ICU alive.  She is still fighting, and as of this morning, seems to be winning this round.  She may come off the vent today or tomorrow, and it seems like her bleeding is slowing on all fronts from administration of the proper blood products.  They're checking viral loads today, to see where we're at against the Adenovirus.  It was last still unreadably high (>10 million) in the blood.  

    She's definitely not out of the woods yet, but I'm still maintaining hope.  I believe God looks way past the odds, ultimately knows the odds.  I guess if we knew the outcome ahead of time, we'd be God.   So keep praying ya'll, that she begins to take 2 steps forward, no steps back and that the odds begin to roll in her favor.