Today Annie and I had our farewell visit with Dr. Salinas, her wonderful pulmonologist who has cared for her since she was in the NICU. And we got great news! Annie’s lungs sound wonderfully healthy and clear. Now that’s she’s growing and developing and in a nutritionally solid place, we got cleared to take her off her Pulmacort, the last of the seven daily meds she was on when she first came to us. We’ll still keep the nebulizer and her meds as back-up if and when she catches a cold, but we no longer need to administer them regularly. The other good news was that Dr. Salinas has had no patients in all of CHLA exhibiting respiratory distress requiring hospitalization from Covid thus far, so she says that Annie’s pulmonary risk if/when she contracts it will not be that different than our other kiddos. We still need to be cautious and mask in appropriate situations since she won’t wear one, but her bigger concern would be asymptomatic transmission to others, not getting sick enough to be hospitalized herself. This doesn’t negate the fact that Annie has a weaker immune system than others or that her multiple medical needs make any illness, including Covid-19, more complicated, but it does provide huge reassurance that she is not in dire danger during this pandemic.
I really needed some good news this week! And in other news, the pandemic sure makes traffic easier. I got to CHLA in under an hour, with a stop for coffee along the way–a record, even counting the time I drove in at 8 pm for her overnight sleep study. With two more trips there in the next eight days (and a trip to the House Clinic on Thursday), I’m grateful for the one little upside of many people working from home here in LA!
That’s great news!
Praise the Lord!
This is awesome news!