Thursday, February 25, 2010

UNDETECTABLE!!!!!!

The doctor's office called me with the results of Victoria's blood work from Monday. Her viral load is UNDETECTABLE! I am so excited about this. While I knew that this is the ultimate goal with medication, I didn't expect it to be so soon. Victoria hadn't even been on the full dose of medicine for two weeks when we had her blood drawn on Monday, so I didn't expect this type of result until at least the next set of blood work. Needless to say, I am so, so happy! This medication that Victoria is on has been great. It is a very easy regimine and she has had absolutely no side effects!

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

It's confirmed

Victoria only has one kidney. I was pretty confident that this information was correct because we felt that she actually received pretty good medical care in Ukraine, but it was nice to have it confirmed (via ultrasound). I have heard many stories of parents that find all kind of false or missing information in their child's medical history once they come home. So far, everything we were told in Ukraine has been correct.

Victoria only has her left kidney. It is larger than a normal kidney, but they say this is what it is supposed to do since it is doing the work of what two would normally do. The ureter that leads from the kidney to the bladder looks completely normal too. We have an appt. with the nephrologist on March 5 to go over the results of the ultrasound in more detail and to form a plan of how they want to follow her.

We also stopped by the pediatric infectious disease doctor's office to have some blood work done. They are going to call me with the results.

I am planning on doing a post coming up (including pictures) about Victoria's medicine routine. I think I might wait until we see the doctor again on March 22 though, so that I can include some pictures of her at their office to show what that visit entails too. I think it might give a better example of exactly what living with HIV means for our family.

Friday, February 12, 2010

All is well

We completed the first two weeks on the 1/2 dose of Victoria's medication and are 3 days into the full dose, and all is well. Victoria shows no signs at all of any side effects to this medication. She is her normal (although a bit crazy) self. She has a normal appetite, no stomach complaints, no fatigue and no jaundice.

The next test will be when she has her bloodwork drawn on the 22nd. This will tell us if the medicine is working as it should. Hopefully we will see that her viral load has gone down and that this medicine is working. I am praying that this will be the case because after the first set of medicine this seems too good to be true. As long as the bloodwork comes back okay, it looks like we have found a combination that is working and something that Victoria could be on for a long time.

We also have an appt. for Victoria to have a renal ultrasound on the 22nd before we go over for her bloodwork. Then on March 5th she will be seeing the Pediatric Nephrologist. This is all just to evaluate her kidney (because she was born with only one) and make sure it is functioning normally. We have no reason to think that she will have any kidney related issues, but especially because of the medication she is on, we want to see the nephrologist. They will decide how often she needs to be seen and I would also like to discuss if there are any precautions we should take with things like sports, etc. We are thinking about signing her up for spring soccer!