Since most of the kids are still sleeping I am going to get some more posts written up.

This week it was back to business…Mercy started her basketball league which she loves. We went to her first game last Tuesday night, and then she had two games this week. She is built for basketball (long, tall and thin!) and she is very athletic so she is quite good.

We also have Ryan and Des with rehearsals for their third grade Christmas play. Ryan landed the starring role of “Santa” (after auditions the music teacher told me that Ry is a ham and was up to do all the crazy things the part will require…we know!!!!). Des got the part of Rudolph which she is excited about. At first she was hoping for Mrs. Claus, but she is was very happy with Rudolph and already knows all of the reindeer’s songs.

We went back to the Pediatric Infectious Disease specialist on Thursday. We got all of Belane’s lab results back last week and were pleasantly surprised. She is doing super well…her HIV related labs were all good. Her liver function, kidney function and thyroid function were all normal. No anemia, her lead was normal, her white blood cells counts were normal, Hep A, B and C were negative, TB test was negative and Syphilis was negative. Syphilis is not normally a concern, but Belane has a funny little shape to the bottom of her front few top teeth, which made the doctor worry about congenital syphilis. If the test had come back positive she would have needed a spinal tap, so we were really stressing that one. We are REALLY glad it was negative and we don’t have to worry about that.

The only test that came back “positive” was her Giardia, which was to be expected, and she has already finished the three days of meds for that.

As a result of her HIV related labs (CD4 count, CD4 percentage and viral load) and her physical exam, they have decided to start her treatment. At the appointment on Thursday they took more blood to do a few more labs, as well as the “phenotype” test, which looks at the strain of HIV and can tell which drugs will be the most affective for her treatment.

That test takes about two weeks to come back, and we have another appointment on Dec. 18, when medications will be decided on and we’ll be taught all about giving them, side effects (very few), thing to look out for, etc.

During the next few weeks we are supposed to see if we can get her to swallow a pill…we are practicing with Tic Tacs (one of the pills she may need is very small like a Tic Tac). Ben takes a pill every day, so we’re hoping she will get the idea by watching him. If not, there is a liquid form of a similar medication. I am not sure if we could try crushing the pill and hiding it in pudding or something or not…another question for next time. I will let you know how it goes…she is on the young side for pill training, but she has surprised us with a lot of other things, so who knows. (We’re trying for the first time today).


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