Day 45

Those of you who are still actually checking this blog will be happy to know that Tessa is making great strides in her improvement.

She's pretty much walking all by herself.

She's starting to talk much more and her sense of humor has come back strong.

She still has the feeding tube which we're trying to find ways to get around in terms of alternate ways of getting her the required nutrients and medications. If we're successful with some of our methods, we can pull out that tube, leaving only one last tube...her catheter for dialysis.

Tessa's kidneys still have not regained alot of function. She is urinating and although her kidneys are successfully transferring liquids to her bladder, they aren't yet doing the best job of filtering out all the toxins or waste products in her system. As a result, Tessa will continue doing dialysis three times a week until either her kidneys regain a more normal/sustainable level of function or until she is required to have a transplant. Obviously we're hoping we can do everything to avoid the latter but it's almost entirely up to her kidneys. We've been regulating her diet pretty closely so that she' eating kidney friendly food but it's been tricky trying to keep her potassium and phosphorus levels low so as to avoid high blood pressure.

In any case, she's regaining energy and quickly getting back to her old self which is so great for all of us to see. It's been like a re-birth in many ways or like condensing 1 year of development into a week and half. Who knows what she'll be saying or doing in another week.

Day 38

Tessa is back gnome!...I mean home!

Day 35

Wow. It's been several days since the last post. It almost feels strange to be doing this still but I wanted to say that Tessa is doing great and making big strides every day...literally. With a little help she's able to take steps and can support of all her own weight while standing. I had her doing squats earlier this evening to get her little chicken legs bulked up to what they used to be a month ago...oh...I almost forgot to mention...she's been peeing. It's just been small amounts a few times so far but it looks like those kidneys have finally come around. 

All in all, Tessa is rapidly getting back to her normal self. I say "rapidly" because in relative terms we've seen a dramatic shift in her improvement just in the last several days. In reality, she still has a ways to go before she's back to normal mentally, physically and verbally but for now all we need to see is progress. Hard to believe this all started 35 days ago...feels like a year to Katie and I.