Update on Annie's Spinal Fusion Infection Treatment

It's now been just over a year since Annie had her big spinal fusion surgery.  And it's been almost a year since she was diagnosed with a very serious infection because of her back surgery.  She had a 3 month course of IV antibiotics, followed by a 9 month course of oral antibiotics to try to eradicate the infection. We are finally nearing the end of this year-long treatment--Annie has about 2 more weeks to go on her antibiotic treatment.

We have very mixed feelings about having her off the antibiotics.  She has been very healthy the past year being on the antibiotics--not even a single UTI, of course. But we do look forward to administering one less drug, and doing away with some of the negative side effects.  However, we are very nervous about her recurrent UTIs returning, since any kind of bacteria she might develop in her body will now have the potential to spread to the metal rods in her back and cause another infection.  Once a child has their rods infected, it is highly likely that they will become re-infected again at a later date.  We pray this won't be the case for Annie, but we also keep that likelihood in the back of our minds.

If Annie's rods were to become infected again, her orthopedist would have to perform another major surgery to remove all the rods and hardware from her back.  This wouldn't affect her spine or scoliosis, because by now, her spine has fused together into a solid piece.  However, surgery to remove the hardware would be as major of a surgery as getting the hardware placed.  It's definitely something we might be facing, and we never know when.  Some infections recur after a year or after 5 years. There's no point in time that she will ever be considered in the clear.

The last couple weeks have been a little rough as Annie has developed worsening diarrhea.  Our first thought of course, was that she must finally have c-diff after such a long treatment on antibiotics.  However, her c-diff test ended up being negative which is a relief, but now we don't know what's causing the problem.  She was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis 4 years ago, so she might possibly have a flare-up, although her colitis has been well controlled, remaining in remission for the last 3 years.  It's also possible she just has some kind of viral bug that might be going around.  She's having more tests done next week, and we'll be meeting with her GI to try to get more answers.  Her antibiotics surely aren't helping the issue, but we don't think they are the cause either, since it's been almost a year now on them without any chronic diarrhea issues.

But otherwise, Annie continues to be happy and healthy.  We have a lot of potential changes coming soon having her off the antibiotics, but like always, we'll just take one day at a time and be grateful she's done as well as she has so far!