A Happy Evening

Grandma and Grandpa came to see Annie at the hospital last night and she started giggling.  At a few points she was laughing so hard she had to stop to catch her breath!  Here are some pictures from last night.

Annie had another grand mal seizure last night and got ativan.  The night was rather uneventful except for needing yet another new IV line.  Her TPN is making her IV lines go bad rather quickly.  As long as she can continue to stay fever free for another 12-24 hours, then they'll start the PICC line for her to receive her TPN through.  This morning Annie was still rather sleepy from last night's ativan.  She had another grand mal this morning also, but since seizures don't scare me as badly as breathing problems from so much sedation from the ativan, I had them not give her any more this morning.  She was incredibly happy in her chair this morning, but just started getting fussy this afternoon.  Here's a picture from her happy moment this morning just after a sponge bath and getting her hair washed.  Again, don't be fooled into thinking she's always this happy. 

Infectious diseases came in today--a new team is on floor rotations this week, so it's a new ID doctor than the one we had last week.  I mentioned that the previous ID doctor said c-diff is just really slow to respond to antibiotics, and the new ID doctor today said, "That's true, c-diff is slow to respond, but not THIS slow."  So there's some concern that Annie has some other underlying issues going on.  The pediatrician this morning said he wanted to consult with GI about doing a colonoscopy, but ID said they want to wait since the risk of bowel perforation dramatically increases with all the inflammation Annie has.  So instead, ID is going to do yet another stool sample to check the level of toxins which should give them a better idea of what's going on and whether the c-diff just isn't responding to the medications, or if there might be other problems.  They continue to watch the stool culture to find out if they need to start trying different antibiotics.

Annie is still rather swollen.  Her hands and feet are the worst right now, partially due to IVs that have gone bad.  The doctor explained today why they can't give her albumin by IV to reduce the swelling.  When given by IV, the albumin passes through the body very quickly, so since Annie's urination is still not really great, they fear that the IV albumin would only make the swelling worse.  But she's on the TPN and lipids, and once she gets even more of that through the PICC line here hopefully soon the swelling should go down even more.

One new thing that has broken up our day a little... a 12 year old girl from our church group is having scoliosis surgery today here at the same hospital.  So it's been a nice break to go down to surgery waiting and chat with them and get updates on their daughter.  She's recovering in a room just two doors down from ours, so it will be nice to have some familiar faces on the floor.