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.