"Home" Sweet "Home"

Well, we finally made it "home". It took a lot of convincing to get the doctor to release Jason today, but finally we managed. We had the physician's assistant on our side and she was the one that ultimately persuaded the doctor to let us go. His creatinine had dropped from 5.2 to 4.2 overnight, which is still on the high side but definitely going in the right direction. The doctor was concerned because his liver enzymes are also elevated now. His AST is at 60 which is moderately high and his ALT is over 120 which is quite high.

1)This could just be a "normal" adverse reaction from IL2 therapy, but the levels usually resolves to baseline in 5 days. It has been 7 days since Jason's last dose. But then again it took forever for his kidney enzymes to start to decrease.
2)The elevated liver enzymes might be a good sign if it means that his immune system is attacking his liver, causing inflammation and killing tumor cells, but also killing some good liver cells in the process "friendly fire".
3)The elevated liver enzymes could also be a bad thing if his liver function is decreasing because of the tumors themselves. I don't think this is the case...but this would be the worst case scenario.

We have no way of knowing which of these are happening, but in any case his blood work will be checked frequently and we are confident that it is just a matter of time before the liver enzymes start to decrease. In any case, I'm going to continue to supplement him with milk thistle, even though the doctor had no idea what it was when I mentioned it to him today. It can help with liver function and cell regeneration and it did wonders for our cat PITA when she had fatty liver disease. (Patti-glad to hear Moe is doing better. Carol-leave Tessie in Ohio).

In the end, we were able to convince the doctor to let us go home since our townhouse is only 2 miles from the hospital and we told him we would come straight in at the first sign of any trouble.

Jason has quite a bit of recuperation before he will feel like himself again, but he is very happy to be back at our temporary "home". Hopefully it won't be long before he's up to posting for himself on the blog. For now, he wants to wish his cousin Brian a Happy Birthday today! He also wants to let everyone know that he misses them. It was great having Terry out over the weekend (Team Jensen was once again complete) and it really helped Jason get through the end of a very long 9 day stretch.

He also wants to thank Pat for the second batch of delicious brownies! And a very special thanks to Kristy, Aunt June, and the Woods for the get well cards. All were received during very miserable hospital days and really helped to make the days just a little more bearable!

One last thing for Marissa and other science and techie friends...sorry about our typo, but for clarification, creatinine is the chemical waste made from creatine, which is an amino acid used for energy production in the muscles. Creatinine is filtered by the kidneys when they are doing their job properly, but when they are impaired, the levels go up in the blood. This makes it a good indicator of kidney function. But in regard to your question about body builders, our physician's assistant said it is a really bad thing when body builders overdo it on creatine supplementation because it can overwhelm the kidneys and cause permanent damage.