Update on the "H"

Went for our monthly visit to UCSF today. According to Dr. Frieden, Raya's ulcer is healed, and we should resume the tapering of the steroids, albeit at a slower pace. We'll start giving her a dose every other day, which presumably will boost her growth a bit. Dr. Frieden hopes that we will have weaned in 1-2 months, which is a bummer given that, were it not for the ulcer, we would have been done at the end of this week; but we are doing everything possible at this point, and we can only hope that there won't be any more setbacks. Dr. Frieden compared weaning from steroids to walking a balance beam, since you don't want to do it so fast that you compromise the treatment, but you don't want to do it so slowly that you compromise the baby's growth. We go back in three weeks to reevaluate, at which point we will be doing 1.5 ml every other day, down from 2.5 mls every day at the beginning. Fingers crossed that nothing dramatic happens between now and then.