Specialist appointment

Sophie had her first follow-up appointment in Portland today at the infectious disease clinic in the pediatric specialty care center across from the hospital. It was a very basic visit. The doctor went over the labs from Sophie's blood that the visiting nurse had drawn on Tuesday. Her inflammation levels have dropped even more, which is great - still elevated, but a lot closer to normal now. The plan from here is to keep up with the blood draws weekly, and in two weeks we will go back for another follow-up appointment. 

I'm not sure if the PICC line might be able to come out that day, but when it is ready to be removed they will do it right there in that office. Sophie was a little nervous about that and asked how it was done, and the doctor assured us both that it was very simple and not painful. Sophie was relieved about that. 

We were also given the ok to remove Sophie's dressings from her chest tube sites whenever we are ready. I think we'll probably tackle that tomorrow morning. Sophie is excited to have them off, but nervous about all the tape that has to be removed, too. I told her she can do it herself at her own pace, and I think that's going to make it much easier on her. From this point on, we can just use regular band-aids to cover them up. 

The appointment was nice and quick and Sophie was well-behaved. I did ask if Sophie would experience any long-term effects from this whole ordeal, but the doctor said that she should recover fully and never have any problems. Her situation wasn't caused by a previously-unknown genetic issue or anything like that - she just had extraordinarily bad luck. She explained that her x-rays will continue to look pretty bad for awhile longer, so it would do no good to take another right now... but we can see that she is doing better just by the way she is acting, and they will do one last chest x-ray in a few more weeks to be sure everything is healing properly. For now, we just let her continue to go at her own pace and help her get back to her normal routine.