‘Ottawa’ One Week After Transplant, Jonathan Pitre Can Finally Rest
One week after his stem cell transplant at the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital, Jonathan Pitre is finally able to get some rest.
Pitre, 16, a Grade 11 student from Russell, Ont., was asleep Thursday morning after one of the most difficult days of his two-and-a-half weeks in hospital.
“We are better today, but yesterday was pretty heavy,” Pitre’s mother, Tina Boileau, said in an email exchange Thursday.
Her son’s blood pressure “went through the roof” during an exceptionally difficult five-hour bath ordeal Wednesday evening.
“It was probably the longest one ever,” she said.
The bath is a necessary part of the disease management protocol for those with epidermolysis bullosa (EB), a progressive skin disorder that is among the most severe afflictions known to medicine. The bath — a key infection fighting measure — is even more important now for Pitre, whose infection-fighting immune cells were systematically destroyed b