29 Oct Update…NOT from home
Submitted by Gray on Tue, 10/28/2008 – 8:08pm.
Last night, Keegan spiked a fever of over 101 right after I posted, right as Gray was loading the car up with most of our stuff in preparation to go home today. When a transplant spikes a fever, they have to draw blood cultures. They drew from his picc line and from a different vein to determine if there were any infections related just to the picc or in his blood system. That alone bought him another 48 hours here to watch the cultures. He had a horrible night with cramping, fever, and diarrhea.
This morning was just as bad. He wouldn’t let me put him down even to change his diaper, so I couldn’t even go to the bathroom. The team needed to start him on IV antibiotics, but couldn’t get one started even after three tries. Of course, Keegan was so upset during the IV attempts that he pulled his ng tube out. We had to sink his tube back and give him a shot of antibiotics since the IV didn’t start. It was awful. Dr. Brown asked for more stool studies to double-check that Keegan hadn’t picked up any new infections during the last two weeks in the hospital. We are extremely careful about making him wear a mask, but you just never know when you’re here what can happen. Right before we got the order for samples, Keegan’s diarrhea got much, much worse. We’ve stopped his feeds until Dr. Brown comes tonight to conference with us. His fever is still going strong, and so far, the cultures are negative.
We’re not sure what will happen if the cultures come back as negative. Obviously, Keegan will need some more investigative procedures to determine the root of the problem. We’re here at least until Thursday for now. We’ll let you know more as we know more. Please, please, please continue to pray for Keegan. He desperately needs it now. Thank you.