A Difficult Night

We had a rather difficult night last night.  Annie was woken up several times for blood draws, and several diaper changes, as well as high fevers that were difficult to control, and more pain causing her quite a bit of distress.  Her blood pressure dropped in the night so she received another IV bolus to try to get it up.  Her temperatures were over 102 despite motrin and tylenol, and she was very agitated with fast, shallow breathing and trembling.  She's now having BMs about every 2 hours, further indicating worsening colitis.  It has become quite painful for her to have a BM too and has developed a sore rash.

This morning we were told that the c-diff test has come back negative, which actually is very surprising to me.  That means that Annie's colitis is being caused by some other type of infection or something else entirely has triggered an ulcerative colitis flare-up.  So they have taken her off the vancomycin and rocephin and started zosyn and flagyl instead, to help better target possible infections in the colon.  The GI doctor will be by later this afternoon to help make a plan and will most likely start her on some steroids as well to help reduce the inflammation.  Annie's orthopedic surgeon will also be in later today to check her and monitor for infection in the rods in her back.

Some stats from this morning are rather concerning: Annie's white blood cell count is still around 34,000.  Her CRP (which is a marker of inflammation) is 27--normal is less than 3.  Annie's hemoglobin is continuing to drop and is now at 7.2 which means she will be getting a blood transfusion later today.  So things are continuing to worsen, but hopefully with the change in antibiotics and hopefully with steroids on board soon, she'll start to turn the corner.  She has also been NPO (not eating anything) for about 3 days now, so if they don't get the inflammation down soon, they will start her on TPN in the next day or two (total IV nutrition).

Thank you so much for all your continued prayers for her and our family.