Thursday, March 24, 2005

Weaning Immunosupresents?

As you may already know Anna had a liver biopsy for her three year transplant anniversary a couple weeks ago. There was talk about putting Anna on a once a day dose of Prograf, (instead of the twice a day dose that she had been taking), if everything looked good on the biopsy. Well, the biopsy looked great! After talking to the doctors we learned that if they were to wean her medication, she would be the youngest and most recent out of transplant that they have ever tried this on. Yikes!!! And to top it all off, Dr. Alonso has left the decision it totally up to us. Double Yikes!!! The way she put it was that Anna would be their pioneer. The way I look at it is, Anna would be their guinae pig.
There are good things that can come of this, since Anna will be on a lower dose of immunosupressents she wouldn't get sick as much. Sounds good to me, especially since she will be starting preschool this fall. And also, what an honor it would be if it all works out, and Anna was a complete success! The down side of it is that she would have a higher chance of rejection. If that happened she would be put back on her now twice a day dose. Since she will be monitored closely, if she were to reject, it would be caught on time and would be easily treated. I'm not quiet sure what to do with all of this. Jason and I are trying to weigh the ups and downs. Dr. Alonso says that Anna would be a prime candidate for this because of her labs being perfect for these past three years, and also the fact that the biopsy looked good as well as the ultrasound she also had a few weeks ago. I'm hoping that Jason and I will decide soon. I know that I am leaning more towards wanting to try this. I will post again when the decision is made.