Tuesday Morning

Last night after Annie's sigmoidoscopy they ordered another chest x-ray.  She had one on Saturday, which we were told was normal, however, I guess there were some blurry spots that they were slightly suspicious of, so they wanted it repeated tonight.  Fortunately, this one came back completely clear, so pneumonia has been ruled out.

Annie had a pretty calm night and got more sleep than the night before.  Our orthopedic surgeon came to see Annie this morning to check her back, double checking to make sure there weren't any signs of infection in her back.  He poked and pushed and thoroughly examined her back and incision and said that everything looks good with no signs of fluid, redness, or infection.  So he's not worried about her back right now, but said there is still concern that the infection elsewhere could spread to her back, but since she's on her antibiotics, he said her back should be protected.

Annie had her daily blood work done early this morning and surprisingly, her hemoglobin came back up to 9.1!  So we're beginning to think that it was only dropping the last two days because she had been receiving large IV boluses shortly before they had been doing the blood draws.  We were concerned that the blood transfusion hadn't happened yesterday, but now we're grateful that got put on hold.  They'll continue to monitor her though.  Her WBC and CRP came down just ever so slightly so that's good too.  We think the new antibiotics might actually be doing something.

Last night I had the idea that Annie should probably be on probiotics to help with her gut, and the doctors agreed that would be a good idea, so she's now on culturelle, so we'll see if that helps at all.

This morning there was talk that they wanted to start Annie on slow, half-strength feeds since the sigmoidoscopy was clear, and because she's been NPO for more than 3 days.  But we still feel very strongly that the problem is with inflammation higher up in her colon.  Because of the distention of her tummy, its tenderness, the frequency and appearance of her BMs... it all seems to point to her colon.  We learned last night from the sigmoidoscopy that the CT scan wasn't accurate, so I don't think we can rely on the CT scan to determine the condition of the colon higher up.

After talking to the hospitalist this morning, she agreed that its something with her gut.  She agrees that it would be beneficial to do a colonoscopy before they start feeding her, and maybe also a pill-cam to get a look at her small intestines, or other MRI-type test to get a better look inside the walls of her colon.  We are waiting for GI to come by today to consult and get orders from them. 

The infectious disease team will also be by later today to run some tests. They are also repeating the c-diff test.  I think we are heading in the right direction and hopefully today will be the day we get some more concrete answers. Thank you so much for all your continued prayers for Annie!