24 Jun Grrr
My brain is fried. Absolutely, positively fried. Here’s why, and I think you’ll understand. I’m going to do my best to make this make sense. Please forgive me if it doesn’t.
FRIDAY:
- We spent all day preparing for discharge. By the time all his medications were delivered and all our ducks were in a row, it was 5pm. Rush hour traffic on a Friday? Must be discharge time for Keegan.
- We intended to switch all of Keegan’s IV medications and TPN to daytime hours, so he would be supervised for all of them, minimizing the opportunities for him to chew on the line again. However, since TPN runs over 10 hours, we would have been stuck at the hospital on Friday until 7pm at the earliest waiting for it to finish. (Hospital pumps/bags are not compatible with the home pumps.) We didn’t want that, so we decided to take our chances with running his Friday TPN overnight when we got home. With checking on him multiple times overnight and him sleeping somewhat better, we thought it would all work out. It didn’t.
SATURDAY:
- After checking on Keegan several times overnight, it seemed like we were going to make it through the last night of TPN without incident. We have a video monitor in Keegan’s room to keep an eye on him at all times. He always, always starts to talk the minute he wakes up. It’s usually jibberish but almost always a cue that he is awake. At 8:30am, we went to check on him just to find him awake…and wet. He had chewed through his line. AGAIN.
- We clamped the line and called the team. Bring him to the Legacy ER to be reaccessed and draw blood cultures. Did that and came home. We prayed and prayed that all would be well.
- My parents decided to keep Audrey and let her swim with Aunt Alex, rather than bring her home and take her back if the line-chewing incident blew up. We missed her so much but knew that was best.
- We waited patiently all day and hoped that no surprises would come overnight. We were wrong.
SUNDAY:
- 1:30am. Phone rings. Blood culture has grown back positive for bacteria. We are told to bring him downtown to be admitted for IV antibiotics immediately. Grr.
- We pull Keegan out of bed and drive downtown. Get to the floor, get him checked in. Go to draw the ethanol out of his line to repeat blood cultures. Nothing. So, we have to reaccess him AGAIN for the second time within two days of back-to-back surgeries on the port site. Then we have to draw a peripheral culture too, but at least by then, he had IV ativan on board
- So far, we have no specificity on the blood culture, but everyone is hopeful that it will come back as a contaminate.
Ultimately, the team was very helpful in discharging Keegan home to wait this out. That was a huge blessing, since standard protocol is to stay inpatient until you have negative cultures for 48 hours. The reason they helped push this was because I am actually having surgery myself tomorrow. You know, just to keep things interesting. It is day surgery, and I should be home by tomorrow night. Grr.
Keegan is not symptomatic of another infection at this point. We have the remainder of the IV antibiotics here at the house to add just one more infusion to our home regime. It’s getting a little crazy. Please join us in prayer that the second cultures will stay negative. I honestly have no idea what we will have to do if it also grows back. One day at a time for now.
I apologize for the terrible organization and grammar of this post. I’m doing the best I can. We are just so thankful for every single prayer you can send up on our family’s behalf. We certainly could not be more grateful. Thank you, friends.