Mary Scovell

For the past week I have not written anything in Mary’s blog because she has spent the entire week sedated and has only been awake for brief moments on occasional days. So now I will attempt to catch everyone up with the news. Mary was back on the oncology floor of Froedtert Hospital when she began to experience seizures resulting in her return to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU). They later moved her to the Neurological Intensive Care Unit (NICU). (This is beginning to sound like a television show as in NCIS, SVU, CSI, etc.) The seizures finally stopped yesterday and her fever is down around 99 degrees. Today, Monday, we had a family meeting with six of the doctors and some other staff that have been working with Mary covering most of her treatment areas. The meeting started with the doctors explaining what had been done up to this point. Her chemotherapy was interrupted after the 12th day because of fevers caused by at least two infections. Doctors are concerned because Mary hasn’t been able to come out fully of sedation at this point. She had to be assisted in her breathing, fed intravenously, turned in bed, in short everything had to be done for her. She had antibiotics, antivirus, antifungals, lasixs to reduce the edema problems, and blood transfusions. There isn’t enough blog room on the internet to contain a complete report. Today as we were in the meeting Mary had another MRI of her brain to try to answer some new questions that are as yet unexplained. She has had 5 lumbar punctures and to this point no leukemia cells are showing up. Tomorrow there will be a second bone marrow test intended to identify any trace of leukemia. Her seizure medication has been stopped, and they’re beginning to take her off the antibiotics. They are going to start waking her tomorrow and seeing if her body can begin to take over healing itself while they search for other possible problems that they can treat. Today’s meeting lasted two hours and we asked many questions including, “is it possible for someone who has had treatments this difficult to make a full recovery?”. The unanimous answer was “yes”, they had had many patients who made full recovery and all of Mary’s vital signs are in very good shape. Other possible investigations might be, a liver biopsy, or a possible brain biopsy. The doctors agree that none of them have seen a case like this before. They are baffled by the mysterious symptoms and reactions. The doctors would like Mary to come out of all her sedations fully, talking and being able to communicate before continuing Leukemia treatments.

Her family is “hanging in” and very appreciative of all your interest. Thank you for everything.

Jack & Sue