So it goes...

So yesterday I went in, we did blood, CXR and PFTs. Well the PFTs were down five points, which isn't happen, and the DLCO was down even more than that , which also wasn't happy. That, plus the shortness of breath and fast heart rate, and other things, led to another bronch! Woohoo! But this time it was in the nifty new "bronch suite," which has two bronch rooms and 7 or 8 pre/post bronch rooms, with TVs and stuff, which are really cool. We have come a long way from the broom closet that the bronch suite used to be. And I'm serious about that. It really was the size of a closet; I kept expecting a janitor to come in looking for mops, or something. So we did that, spent some time on C5 until I was reasonably coherent, and then I came back here and slept. I had two bagels yesterday--that was my entire food consumption. I'm obviously not at work, which is a good thing b/c my blood sugars are all nutty and I've got a big headache, plus sleeping is still really, really high on my to-do list.

So here's the plan--if it's still infection, then we just have to come up w/ a better way to treat it. If it's rejection, since we've already done 2 steriod courses, we might change the Imuran to another drug. Sometimes that's all it takes. If we still can't tell, then I might have a date w/ Dr. G, who can do a more "surgical" biopsy and remove a nice big piece for us to look at. This will require some "resort time" since a chest tube (ugh, ugh, UGH I hate chest tubes!!!!!!!) will be involved,but it would give us some definitive answers. However, Dr. A felt we should do one more regular bronch before we called in Dr. G. So we'll see. I am awaiting a phone call to let me know what's what. I sure do a lot of waiting by the phone....