You Know We Love You, But...

We will be home from the hospital tonight, and we know there are a lot of people who want to see Andrew. Unfortunately, Andrew's access to other people will be extremely limited in the next few months. The only people who will really get to see Andrew in the near future will be us, the girls, and his grandparents, and that will be almost entirely when they help us with child care.

We have to limit Andrew's access to possible viral and bacterial infections because his immune system is not only weak, but it is also being suppressed. In the protocol article the doctors gave us about immunosuppressive therapy, 6 out of the 62 patients studied for the paper died within 6 months. All 6 deaths were due to "opportunistic infections". Therefore, we have to limit his opportunity to contract these infections the best we can.

Each person comes in contact with dozens of other people over the course of a week. Each of these contacts is a possible source of a virus being spread. Someone you talk to could go a week without getting sick, but still could have spread the virus to you. You can then spread it to him a week before you feel ill. So if we let all the people who want to see Andrew come over to our house, and each of them have been in contact with dozens of people who are possible spreaders, we increase the pool of contacted people to thousands, of which one needs to be sick to spread something to him.

Andrew will contract things that most people's bodies fight off without them knowing, because his immune system is so low right now. Therefore, while we would love to see everyone, we just can't do it.

The rest of us will be more isolated too for the immediate future. Erin, Sophia, Madeline, and I will be doing our best to limit our own access to others, especially when summer vacation starts in a couple weeks. Since we will be around Andrew the most, we will try to have the least contact.

So please understand if we say no if you ask to come over, or don't invite you in if you drop something off. Also, don't be offended if we can't make it to your barbecue or birthday party, or if we say no to playdates or golf. It is not that we don't want to; we are going to be losers until the doctors tell us otherwise for Andrew's sake.