Laura’s story – Part 37 – illness and Biopsy results

It has been over a year since Laura underwent her 6th and (so far) last open heart surgery. On January 7th, 2017 Laura had her heart removed from her chest and a new, gifted heart, put in it’s place.

We celebrated her one year transplant anniversary with friends and family and it was a wonderful day! Amongst the celebrating though, there was loads of planning. Planning for her annual GFR (kidney work up), kidney and liver ultrasound, 24 hour holter monitor, biopsy and angiogram.

There is so much to be done in and around the anniversary of a transplant that it can be easy to lose sight of the joy. On top of all this, Laura has pretty much been constantly ill since Boxing Day.

It began with a GI virus (presumably gastroenteritis) and then a GI irritation from that virus, followed by a mystery virus in early January that caused a high fever and neutropenic episode and then right after we returned home from her biopsy in early February she caught a cold. Awesome.

It has been a rough couple of months for our dear little one. She’s endured these viruses and she has also been having bad eczema flare-ups and was recently diagnosed with a peanut allergy. The hits seem to keep coming for Laura.

You know what’s crazy though? She has no clue. None. As far as she’s concerned, life is good. I mean, really, she’s one and a half – life IS good!

Laura has been continuing to surprise us with her adventurous personality. She loves to climb things and explore all over the house and wherever else she finds herself. She loves to read and be read to. She laughs ALL. THE. TIME. As in, she laughs so frequently that it is usually not even at anything. If she hears someone laugh, she laughs too – just to feel included. She also makes jokes to herself and laughs at them. Sometimes she’ll be in a different room than us and we hear her let out a chuckle. She is one of the funniest little humans I have ever met.

Things have also been turning around for her medically speaking. We’ve been able to space out her blood work to every 2 weeks from every 3-4 days and we are down to 0 appointments and two times at the lab scheduled for March from a whopping 9 appointments and 9 lab visits between January and February.

We also received the news this week that Laura has absolutely ZERO REJECTION! Everything came back negative from her heart biopsy. We also received the fantastic news that all the pressures in Laura’s heart are now in normal range (some were a bit high at her June cath) and her coronary arteries look perfect!

When it comes right down to it, when you receive the news that her heart is still perfect, a cold and a few GI issues are really not so hard to tolerate 🙂