Thursday, March 3, 2011

Infection? Day 19!

Good evening! We had a late night at the hospital tonight and then it was off to the parents house for dinner tonight so thus a late blog entry which is my norm anyhow. To start we had our favorite nurse and respiratory therapist tonight which is always a good start to the day. Calen's condition is what I might call shaky at this point. It is truly amazing how fast these small children's health can change so incredibly rapidly. We are still progressing in his weight which is awesome, although at this point he is not on any feedings due to multiple health concerns. Due to earlier issues that he was not absorbing the breast milk that he was getting, they decided to just hold off on feeding's all together now. His hemoglobin is started to drop again which means another upcoming blood transfusion. I asked today about why he is having a drop in his hemoglobin and they said it is common due to neonates bone marrow being unable to make enough red blood cells to make lovely oxygen carrying hemoglobin. 


So other problems that have been getting progressively worse is his breathing. He has just been becoming more and more lethargic and not moving as much. He is continually having problems where he is just not breathing and his heart rate is plunging down, when simple arousal used to work now it doesn't and they have to use other measure to get his heart rate back up. Due to these problems they have decided that we cannot hold him, at least until they figure out what is going on. They are thinking that he has an infection starting to brew which is what is causing his problems. His blood draws are showing that he has increased white blood cells (WBC) and this could be indicating an infection. They did a chest xray today to ensure that his Endotracheal Tube (ET), which is his breathing tube, to ensure that it was in the right place and it checked out fine, they also took an xray of his belly to see if any problems there and this again came back fine. So this leaves us with the possibility still of an infection, most likely in his blood which they would call septicemia. They have started him on some pretty intense broad spectrum antibiotics which are Vancomycin and Fortaz which he will receive every 12 hours and will be given probably at least for the next 48 hours until the blood cultures come back to help control an infection now if he has one.


A bag valve mask is up on top of Calen's isolett. Since he has been having these continuous episodes of not breathing and most means of stimulation are not working they are resulting at times to manual bagging. They placed the bag valve mask onto the ET tube and push air rapidly into his lungs to stimulate lot's of oxygen which does stabilize him. He seems to be having a lot of mucus secretions in his lungs, and chronic suctioning down the ET tube is also required which improves his breathing as well. 


I had just finished checking Calen's temp and changing his diaper. Holly snapped a shot of me holding onto his little feet and head. I am counting on all of you reading to ensure an extra prayer goes out for Calen the next few days so that he pushes through this ordeal. They told us we would be on a roller coaster, and we just have no idea how high the first hill is to climb. Goodnight!

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