We’re about five days in on the bacterial infection and have seen steady improvements the last couple days.
Wednesday through Friday was basically a mix of high fever, persistent vomiting, a strong headache, dizziness, and no eating or drinking.
As mentioned in Friday’s post, the IV Tylenol was critical in getting some control over the fever since he couldn’t keep anything down. The first big progression was that he puked in the middle of Friday night, but not since then. This was a good thing because apparently IV Tylenol is like liquid gold and it would have been tough to continue making the case of keeping him on it. That we were able to get it for a couple days probably kept him out of the ICU.
He’s still receiving Tylenol every 6 hours. It’s mostly the same pattern of a few good hours and then an uncomfortable wait until the next dose. He’s still getting some high fevers, but the high yesterday was 104.7 while the highest today was 102.6. The accompanying headache also seems to be less severe. During the worst of it his heart rate was hanging around 140bpm and with dipping blood pressure, but vitals have been stable since Friday.
He had barely eaten anything the last two days, but tonight was finally able to eat a rice ball and two applesauces. That basically quadruples his intake from the last few days in one sitting so a big step in the right direction.
He was also able to get unhooked and move around enough for the first shower since Tuesday. We’d been doing wipes in bed the last few days. That’s not ideal from an infection-control standpoint, but he was much too dizzy to take a shower until today.
They continue to take blood samples each day and check for bacteria growth. Nothing has grown in the last few days which is a great sign. Results also came in from the bacteria susceptibility testing and Infectious Disease called it a “wimpy bug” which is exactly what you want to hear. That doesn’t mean it can’t and hasn’t wreaked havoc, but that it should be very killable. That testing allowed them to introduce a more targeted antibiotic: ceftriaxone. The vancomycin and cefepime did their job as the first broad attackers, but much better to narrow focus and limit potential side effects.
In terms of counts, he’s still at zero for ANC. The last few days were also tanking his platelets and hemoglobin as he received two transfusions of each. Today’s counts showed a smaller dip in platelets and no dip at all in hemoglobin. I’ll have to see another day or two of labs to trust it, but we were probably at the start of count recovery before the infection and it’s possible platelets and hemoglobin will start to stabilize.
I don’t think I’ll feel too comfortable until the fevers subside and counts are up, but am thankful for the steady progress. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. We love you all and over and out.