Day 92--Brain fungus

We had our weekly appointment with Dr. Tse today, who told us Torger's biopsy from last week looked good and his infection-fighting ability is getting stronger. Over the next week, we'll have a whole slew of appointments with different specialists in anticipation of being allowed to move home after Day 100. But when we get home, we have a whole new reason to be cautious and worried: brain fungus. Brain infection from aspergillus is an increasing risk for transplant patients, and apparently two CU Cancer Center patients have died from it just recently. Unfortunately, aspergillus spores are hard to avoid. They're present in dirt and dust and floating around in the air. We know a lot of the things Torger must continue to avoid, like coming in contact with dirt or live plants, construction sites, dust, and being in rooms that are being dusted and vacuumed. But now we've started worrying about things like the musty smell that we get from the crawl space at times when the air conditioner comes on...or some of Torger's old collectible, record albums that may have a patch of mildew in places on their covers from when we had a flood at our old house. We knew we needed to replace the carpet in our bedroom because it's old and dusty and covered with cat dander (not to mention other, aromatic reminders of our poor, late kitty). But now it's urgent, as is taking down the old wallpaper in our computer room. Ai yi yi. Suddenly, going home doesn't sound quite as fun for either of us. Torger is actually pretty concerned about it because he was feeling that we had things pretty well under control. But as usual, Dr. Tse finds a way to keep us on our toes and paying attention to all the things we have to do to keep Torger alive. We also found out today about another risk we hadn't foreseen: With his new blood, Torger is no longer vaccinated against anything. Measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus...all the diseases he hasn't worried about since childhood are now real risks. We are under strict orders to avoid contact with any unvaccinated people until Torger can get re-vaccinated at one-year post transplant. I'm starting to suspect that we're going to be looking back at our 100 days in the hotel as the easy part of this whole process...re-entering the real world is starting to seem a little daunting.