Transferring care

There have been many conversations today, between doctors, between doctors and us, between us, and ultimately it has been decided that Eila should be transferred to Doernbecher's in the morning for the next steps in dealing with her infection.  Here's a summary of the day:

It appears that the Coagulase-negative staphylococcus was a contaminant in Eila's cultures, so we are only dealing with an infection from an Enterococcus species.  Normally this could be treated with a relatively straight-forward antibiotic, but Eila's stent complicates things -- basically it gives the germs a place to hide from the drugs.  In order to overcome this, a second drug would need to be added and this would be potentially harmful to Eila's limited kidney.  Since we have done everything we can for the past 2+ years to be gentle to Eila's kidney, this isn't our first choice now.

The original plan for this week had been to remove Eila's stent on Monday, but that had to be cancelled when she had a fever over the weekend.  So the logical question would be can we remove the stent now to make treating her infection less complicated?  Simply put, that's the plan, we just have to work on getting back onto urology's schedule.  Luckily, Dr. Thomas is working hard to get everyone coordinated on this, and feels it would be best if Eila was in Portland so the various specialists could evaluate her and find her fit for the removal procedure (fingers crossed that it will be on Thursday or Friday).

She has received thoughtful care while here in Corvallis, and we really appreciate all the extra work the doctors here had to do in communicating with all the specialists at Doernbecher.  And now we really hope that the big issues can be resolved quickly so we can return home soon.  What happened to her 2 weeks off between chemo stays...