Dear friends,
Today is Aimee’s 17th birthday. We have enjoyed a sweet day focusing on celebrating her.
Yet, I come here tonight to share difficult news. 2 weeks ago, Aimee started to go into sepsis. With the help of 3 big gun IV antibiotics, she has slowly been climbing back out of the depths of an unresponsive, coma to again being responsive. Albeit she is still very exhausted and still showing infection signs. She has very minimal amount of awake and present time.
Unfortunately, after using several different heavy-duty antibiotics over and over this past few years, she has reached a point where there are no more good options available to treat her reoccurring infections. For the moment she has been stabilized, but she has not come near to her baseline. She is exhausted. We brought in a new sample to be cultured and 3 of the bacteria that she is growing are essentially super bugs, multi-drug resistant, and impossible to eradicate. Today Ed and I met with her Pulmonologist and her palliative/hospice nurse. Tomorrow is the last day of this 14 day course of antibiotics. There is one more combination of antibiotics that we can try, but it is not a big hope that it will work. More of a last effort that we have to try just in case it will buy her more good days for a bit longer. It is only a matter of how much time. Our hope at this point is to knock down the bacteria so that she can have the energy to be awake and be present again. Ultimately, it is up to Aimee and how long she wants to fight.
Aimee has worked so hard to be here and we’ve done our best to give her every weapon. She is a champion and we are proud of her. We love her sweet, knowing smiles, her firm handholds, and her calm presence. We love her so much that we are also figuring out how we can let her go. How very grateful I am to not be walking this road alone. We are walking it together as a family with Aimee until she is ready to fly free.
