Yesterday we made a fast and frantic road trip to Utah and back, for another appointment for Belane.

It was an emotional day, and one that sort of took me by surprise.

We went in to see her doctors to get the results of her last round of blood tests, one of which was a phenotype test, which looked at her particular strain of HIV and determined which medications would be the most effective in treating Belane, and which medications if any she is resistant to. The other test looked at the amount of virus in her blood, or her “viral load”.

The results of her blood tests combined with her physical exams since she has been home caused the doctors to determine that she is ready to start her therapy. (And she will also be getting surgery to put tubes in her ears in early January because of chronic fluid in her ears causing hearing loss).

The good news is that she does not have any resistance to any of the medications, which is wonderful because it leaves her treatment options wide open.

The doctors chose a “cocktail” of three medications, two of which she will take twice a day and one of which she’ll take once a day. Two of them are liquids, and one is a small pill (we have been practicing by “training” her to swallow Tic Tacs, which she does just great!) There are some side effects that can be common in the first few weeks on the meds, but many of the kids don’t have any side effects at all, so we will just have to wait and see how it goes for her.

Also, since her immune system has been suppressed and not working like it should, once the meds start to work and her immune system starts back up or “reconstitutes”, it is possible that she will have some fevers, etc. as her immune system “notices” the germs that have been hanging out in her body and starts to fight them off. We’ll be keeping a close eye on her the next few weeks.

Her doctor is going to call to check in in two weeks, and if all goes well, we will just go back in three months to start her routine quarterly visits.

We started the routine this morning… I have a watch with three alarms on it that I wear all the time…one alarm to get up in the morning, one for Belane’s morning meds and one for her evening meds. I figure with the alarms it will make it much easier to keep things on schedule, which is important.

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