The summer went on pretty smoothly - in fact I went home to Minnesota for a family reunion and had a great time, but shortly after that a new problem appeared. I developed a sudden respiratory issue that didn't feel like Pneumonia (I'd had that a LOT recently) but was very severe. I couldn't walk even a few feet without getting extremely short of breath - I mean not even 20 feet - and having to sit down to recover. It felt like my bronchial passages would just collapse whenever I stood up.
I went to see my primary care physician, and when he learned that I'd had a surgical procedure on my leg recently immediately worried about a pulmonary embolism - a blood clot in my chest. I'd had those before - in the months leading up to my initial lymphoma diagnosis - and couldn't figure out how I hadn't remembered that, because it did feel very familiar. He immediately sent me to the emergency room where they did an EKG, chest x-ray and CT scan, but everything came back all clear.
Everyone was stumped. About then I had my one-year milestone review with my transplant team, and Dr. Yeager sent me for a pulmonary function diagnostic test. This is covered in the testing pages, so I won't go into detail here except to say that my result was about 25% lower than it had been during my last test, which wasn't good, since it was supposed to be improving. I felt pretty terrible so I was expecting bad news after the 1-year milestone tests were completed. Imagine my surprise when things came back all clear. I was pretty happy and relieved, to say the least.
That still left me with this debilitating lung problem, though. The extensive lab work done didn't show anything either, and finally he concluded that it was possible I had a rare diffused lung condition that sometimes (rarely) happens with infants and was related to a new/growing immune system. I certainly fit that category. He gave me a perscription for antibiotics and they gave me my one-year immunization shots (8 of them!). Several of the shots were in muscle tissue, and about a week later I found a lump on my arm. Of course I prepared myself for a new round of biopsies, but then remembered the shots, and waited a few days. Luckily the bump disappeared - another bullet dodged - and within 10 days or so I was feeling much better.
So I learned first-hand about a problem that is almost exclusively restricted to a small portion of infants in their first year of life. And I also gained a new understanding of cranky infants who are in the process of growing an immune system. It's not a comfortable time, but yay for new immune systems any way!
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