19 Mar Friday Update
I’m going to make this short because it’s Gray’s night at the hospital, and I’m very much looking forward to crawling into my own bed tonight! Ironically, I had to download a white noise app on my phone because the stark silence of an empty house was too unnerving to allow me to actually fall asleep. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find one with “hospital monitor” noise. Guess that wouldn’t be too appealing to the general population!
Keegan’s day was pretty much status quo, in that he didn’t throw us any curveballs or changes or really any improvements either. He still is having bad diarrhea (way worse than even his baseline), little change in his labs, kidney still happy, and energy still good for two good spurts morning and afternoon. He tolerated the half-strength formula well enough with only slightly more output than on the pedialyte.
Sometimes status quo is a good thing when you’re inpatient, but frankly, we would rather be seeing more improvement from him at this point in the course of this virus. So, today we started him on IVIG given through his g-tube four times a day and will do so for the next four days. IVIG is usually given in an IV form (in case you couldn’t tell that from the first two letters of the name). If you want to argue semantics, IVIG stands for intravenous immunoglobulin. We’re just giving the same immunoglobulin through his gut instead of his line. Our hope is that it will give a boost to his bone marrow, help heal his GI tract, and shorten his recovery time. Of course, the last drug we started him on (still on it) was supposed to shorten recovery and pretty much did nothing, and the virus in a healthy person would have been gone several days ago. He just received his second dose, so the real test will come over the weekend.
That’s the biggest news of the day. No pictures today. A pretty quiet Friday on the floor for us at least. It appears that Spring Break is coming to an end because the floor literally filled up with new admissions by this afternoon. No one wants to be sick over Spring Break, I guess!
I know I say it every day, but we really feel blessed and are beyond grateful for your prayers for Keegan. He is a fighter, but we know that he is strengthened daily by those of you who intercede on his behalf. Thank you so much! More tomorrow.