AmberLee Jensen

This post is a long time coming. I apologize for not posting sooner. Things have been so hectic lately with work and also it makes a big difference that we don’t have internet here in the apartment. I wrote a majority of them while I was in the hospital. I will try to remember everything I need to post, but most likely I wil forget something so I apologize for that. It will be posted later.
AmberLee is doing good. She would say great, but she has had some difficult trials placed in her path. The side effects of the medicine are starting to show and they are difficult to bear in more ways that one. First off, one of the side effects of prednizone gives you a moon face, chipmunk cheeks, whatever you would like to call it. That as you can imagine has been very difficult for her. It would be for anyone. It is changing the way she looks but she is still as beautiful as ever. The positive is that it is not permanent. As soon as she goes off the prednizone her face will return to normal. Another side effect of the prednizone is achey joints. She already has a small amount of arthritis that manifests in storms but the prednizone is magnifying that and not waiting for the storms. She woke up last week I was here and she thought she had done major damage to her knee. We iced it, put daniels ointment on it and everything. Eventually it began to feel better. Then the next day it was the other knee. It is getting a little better now. Not so unbearable. She is also having severe acid reflux that is keeping her up some nights. I know this sounds horrible, but it isn’t unexpected so they have ways to help her deal with it and she is comfortable most the time.
She had another checkup last Tuesday and everything for the most part went well. She got there the first time and all the immediate tests were good, but when they got back to the apartment they received a call and they wanted her to come back to the hospital. When she got there they told her that a virus that she had been taking an experimental drug to prevent was showing up. I’m going to do a little background on this for those who don’t know what I’m talking about. There is a virus that 70% of all people have had. It is very similar to the cold (don’t quote me on that) and your body can fight it off, but the difference is that after you get this virus you will have it for the rest of your life. A normal immune system will keep it at bay and you’ll never even know that you had it let alone still have it, but a suppressed immune system, AmberLee, could end up being fatal. AmberLee was tested for this virus and was found to have it. They gave us a choice to try an experimental drug that has shown great success at stopping this virus from resurfacing. We decided to donate her body to science and give it a try. The one catch was that they needed to see the effects from both sides. The way they did this was by flipping a coin. You either received the medicine or a placebo, and that gave them the data they needed. Anyway back to the story. When she found out that this virus had resurfaced they also told her that she had received the placebo. She now has an IV she is taking twice a day to fight the virus. Everything is going well so far and no signs of any problems.
How about we flip to the good side of things. Everything else is going so well that she has been given the okay to go to restaurants and movies (matine’s only). You can imagine her excitement. She has already been to quiznos, we went to Chili’s last night, and we even went and saw Shrek yesterday, bad movie to start with but it was still fun. She has been in heaven. She is also getting a lot of her energy back. She stills gets very tired quickly. Nothing compared to the hospital though. So that is a good sign.
As I said, all in all everything is going good, and we are optimistic to come home on time. Thank you all, and we love you.