Eli did get a good night of sleep last night. He's still laboring to breathe at times, but it's so much better than yesterday! The nurses draw off his chest tube every four hours. The amounts that have come off have varied. It's usually 20-35cc but once it as as low as 0.6cc! The chest tube doesn't seem to bother him. I got a picture of it today but I'm not loading pics to the blog right now. It's been a long day.
Eli was very fussy most of today (which is a right he has earned!). He's tired of being confined to the bed but doesn't have the energy to get up & do anything. We were going to take a wagon ride but didn't find a chance between doctor visits, medication times, and morphine stupor :( Maybe in the next day or two. I did get to hold him for a while this afternoon and he fell asleep on me ♥ We're allowed to hold him, but honestly we don't much because it hurts him.
This evening he has been much more comfortable and therefore pleasant. He was allowed to eat solids today and did have a few bites. He's had several milk bottles and some juice from the sippy. He's getting a tube feeding tonight just to get some extra calories to him to help with healing. That will stop at 3am and he'll be allowed clear liquids (if he even wants anything then) until 6am. After that he's NPO (nothing by mouth) until after the PICC line placement. That will be done in the radiology department and he will be sedated again. His second time in three days, third time in a week.
We spoke to the pediatric infectious disease specialist this afternoon. Right now Eli is getting Vancomycin and Ceftapime. After more info comes back from the blood cultures, he may change antibiotics to more specific treatment. His main concern right now is that Eli's central line culture and his peripheral culture came back positive, so this is in his blood. His blood travels through his heart. His heart was just cut on for surgery six days ago. The heart doesn't have skin over it like the outside of our bodies so this infected blood is passing over recent wounds. If the infection settles there we could be in the hospital for weeks so Eli can receive proper antibiotic treatment. There is still the possibility that the antibiotics he's been on will have already worked some magic and we don't have a lot of "tweaking" to do.
Prayer Requests:
- for Eli to have another good night of sleep.
- for Zachary to get up and off to school in a good mood in the morning
- for Eli's cultures to come back with better news than we expected and for him to already be on the mend!
- for Eli's PICC line placement and recovery from the sedative to go smoothly
- for Eli's heart buddy Caleb who has been at Riley on the transplant list since November. Coincidentally, Caleb is getting a new PICC line tomorrow morning as well, so please include him in your prayers for an easy time getting that put in.
Thank you all so much. I'll provide updates as I can Wednesday, but as always, don't assume no news is bad news. Assume it's that we get to hold or play with Eli instead of watching him lay in bed with no energy.
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