Continued from the previous post.

By the time I arrived home in the evening, word was starting to come in from doctor friends to whom I'd passed all the info I had and asked for opinions, strategies, and so on.

Being that medical care available on this island is limited, it is often necessary for patients to seek treatment abroad ... my cardiologist is in Singapore, for example ... so figuring out how soon T could be well enough to travel had to be a consideration.

A look at his chart had told me that his hematocrit count (HTC) and his blood pressure were very low, so I knew he wouldn't be traveling until both had come up considerably.

The fact that his urine appeared to be more blood than anything else had me very concerned about his renal system (Kidney failure is what killed my father ... he was a dialysis patient for years after exposure to a toxic substance did his renal system in ... so my mind naturally runs to worrying in that direction.), and the fact that they weren't restricting, nor even monitoring, fluids had me concerned.

All this I conveyed to people with knowledge I trust.

Because a friend had recently lost his eleven-year-old son to leukemia, my mind drifted there too easily.

Comfort on that account came with a hint at information from his blood work saying it was T's white blood cells that were attacking his red blood cells, so he obviously has plenty of those.

A dramatic improvement in his condition, reported by his mom by phone later, after receiving a second unit of blood was also good news. He was even hungry, and wolfed down an entire meal!

Still without any official confirmation, the consensus of experts I trust leads me to believe that T has an inherited condition called G6PD deficiency, or glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, which means he lacks an enzyme that would keep his red blood cells functioning normally.

Continued in the next post.