SOC
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Many of you have heard that my daughter has been in remission for over a year after about 18 months on Valcyte. We have never considered this a cure. She still takes Valtrex to keep herpesviruses suppressed.
She has no ME/CFS symptoms. Physically she does everything she wants to without problems. She has not tried competitive sports or heavy aerobic activities, yet, so we don't know for sure what her situation is there.
We just got her immune tests from September -- no analysis/interpretation from the doc, yet. Here's the kicker -- her NK numbers are low (1.7%), NK function is low (4.25%), CD4+ high and CD8+ low (like me). Her cytokines look like a mess -- all over the place with quite a few very high or very low. None of this surprising for a PWME, but I expected it to look a lot better than it did for someone doing as well as she is.
I wonder if our immune tests are always going to look flaky, even if we are symptom-free (or nearly so) with treatment. Or maybe she doesn't have as many symptoms because we caught the infections early and treated them aggressively before much damage was done. Or......?
I expect that even though she feels fine, the doc will add something to her treatment to improve her NK cell function. We'll see in about 10 days. Meanwhile, we'll be wondering about this dichotomy between symptoms and immune test results.
She has no ME/CFS symptoms. Physically she does everything she wants to without problems. She has not tried competitive sports or heavy aerobic activities, yet, so we don't know for sure what her situation is there.
We just got her immune tests from September -- no analysis/interpretation from the doc, yet. Here's the kicker -- her NK numbers are low (1.7%), NK function is low (4.25%), CD4+ high and CD8+ low (like me). Her cytokines look like a mess -- all over the place with quite a few very high or very low. None of this surprising for a PWME, but I expected it to look a lot better than it did for someone doing as well as she is.
I wonder if our immune tests are always going to look flaky, even if we are symptom-free (or nearly so) with treatment. Or maybe she doesn't have as many symptoms because we caught the infections early and treated them aggressively before much damage was done. Or......?
I expect that even though she feels fine, the doc will add something to her treatment to improve her NK cell function. We'll see in about 10 days. Meanwhile, we'll be wondering about this dichotomy between symptoms and immune test results.