Grateful for A Few Small Things

Early today we received some really good news. Avarie's immune system is starting to return. Your immune system is made up of many different types of cells, the one that we watch to know how her immune system is functioning is called neutrophils, I could totally be spelling that wrong, we always refer to it in an abbreviation called her ANC or ABS. Her ANC has been 0 for a while, but today her blood work showed some neutrophils. It was .14, a normal range is between 1.5 and 11.00. So yes she is still in credibly low, but it is at least registering and that means that she is on the mends. We didn't expect a return of her immune system until this weekend, so it came a little early, but we are all very excited to have it to help us fight these infections that are ravaging her body.
She also underwent some surgery today. She had the pic put in and a biopsy of one of the nodules, which by the way she has gotten several more since yesterday which the infectious disease control Dr did not think was a good thing. So he was very happy that she was already on the schedule to have one biopsied. They also biopsied part of her sinus and drained fluid from there. The CT had showed fluid built up there. When the Dr drained the fluid he told me that there was puss there so there was definitely some form of infection there, but we just don't know what kind. The frustrating thing is that she could have several different kinds of infections going on and they may not even be related to each other. It would be nice if it was all from one thing, then we could give one medicine and help fix the problem. Most likely there is just a lot of different things going on which means lots of different kinds of medicines. But hopefully we just get some answers. I am hopeful that we will have answers.
So although she is miserable today we are hopeful that we will have some answers soon. The Dr's are hopeful too. They even brought on a Dermatologist from OHSU today to consult and look at her. He agreed she is one sick little girl, but he too was hopeful the biopsy would reveal something. Although I should make a disclaimer that they have told me it is possible that no bug may show up in the cultures they take of all the infections but they are hopeful that something will show itself. So today is a day when we are grateful for the small things like the small bit of her immune system that is trying to come back. That one has given me a skip in my step today.