Still hanging out

Good news...Tom brought my laptop to me last night & there is wireless internet here, so I can actually post updates more frequently now! Yeah! After I posted the update the other day, we found out Monday morning that Jenna's not allowed to leave her room now because she started running a fever Sunday afternoon & ran one pretty consistently until Monday morning. They started running some tests for viral stuff and evidently hospital policy is that when they check for viral stuff they have to be on "limited contact" which means everyone that comes into our room has to wear a gown & gloves, and she's not allowed to leave the room. She's done OK with it, although she is really missing her wagon rides around the hospital. Everyone that comes to visit has brought plenty of stuff for her to do, so she keeps busy.

As far as an update on her health, she is doing well. She hasn't run a fever since Mon. morning and has been in good spirits. Test results are still trickling in, and are looking good. Chest x-rays have been clear, an ultrasound she had done looked fine, and the viral tests that have come back have been negative. The biggest test result that we're still waiting on is on her parathyroid. The dr. said this morning that part of it has come back showing that it is nothing auto-immune which is good. If you're like me, I had to ask what that meant, and it means that the body is not attacking itself somehow (like lupus). The main result that they're still waiting on is to see if the PTH level comes back low. I don't know what that is, but if it does come back low or even normal I guess, then that means she has hypo parathyroidism & they'll be able to treat it. Right now they have been giving her medications to raise her calcium slowly. Originally, she had to eat 5 tums with every meal, then they switched & took her off those to give some other medications orally. I've given up asking the names of all the medications. But, anyways, the dr. said this morning that her calcium actually went down a little yesterday & again today (nothing drastic), so they're switching her meds up again. She'll go back on tums, and then up the dose on the other calcium medicine. She takes them both with each meal, and they just gave her a double dose of the tums (10 tums!!) for breakfast in hopes of boosting the calcium. Let's hope this does the trick :)

The dr. had said Monday that he hoped we could go home Wed. or Thurs., but now it's looking like it will be later since they still haven't gotten all the test results back, and her calcium dropped. They draw blood once each morning, so I'm guessing until they see for at least a couple days a level they like, they're not gonna discharge her. But, overall, she still looks good & feels good so that's encouraging to the doctor.

I guess the main prayer requests we have are that she will stay in good spirits, the test results will come back & not show something surprising, and her calcium will continue to go up.

In other news, Trevin has been a trooper here at the hospital with us. He has slept very well actually in a wagon and has been going 5-6 hours b/w feedings! Which means I actually have gotten some very good sleep here.

I'll sign off for now, and will keep you posted with any other updates as we have them! Thanks again for all your prayers!

One last side note....after I initially posted this, I found a web page that tells about hypoparathyroidism if you want to read about it: www.parathyroid.com/hypoparathyroidism.htm