Progress

It's been a slow moving process when it comes to Traci's healing, but we're grateful that progress is being made.

It was in August of 2008 that Traci began going to City of Hope twice a week to change the dressings on the wounds on her legs. At the time, her right leg wound encompassed nearly 85% of her lower limb (below the knee) with only 15% of her skin remaining. On her left leg, the number was better at 45% of her skin remaining. It was a dire circumstance with several hospital admissions to tend to the wounds that the GVHD had caused, and from the time of Conscious sedation procedures, progress was slow moving.

In November of 2008, Kaiser moved her procedures from City of Hope in Duarte, CA to the Kaiser Sunset Facilities in West Hollywood, CA. And the necessity to change the dressings was really only once per week. By spring of 2009, the vascular surgeon overseeing her dressing changes had said, "We're making progress. But it's really slow." His equation was, "It's kind of like watching the grass grow. The progress happens week over week, but at such a slow rate, it's difficult to see. But in measurements, her wounds are closing."

On Monday, we came out of the Kaiser Sunset operating room with good news, the wounds on her right leg had closed to nearly 50%. So, in 1 year, she's been able to regenerate nearly half the skin on her right leg. This is a tremendous sign. But even better news was that her left leg was closed to nearly 75%, which means that there was only 25% more to go. And the week over week levels were noticeable.

Traci's overall health is beginning to have modest improvements with increases in her nutrition levels, and stabilization of her blood counts. In fact, it's been nearly 3 months since Traci has last had to have a blood transfusion, an area that used to be required about every 6 weeks to make up for the lost blood during the week from the wounds on her legs, and the opening of the dressings during the changes. But her blood counts have remained stable for 2 consecutive weeks, which we take as a good sign.

There is still a long way to go, and we are by far not out of the woods yet. But the steady progress that Traci has generated from the obvious healing in the last year IS an encouraging sign.