Back in the Hospital

Monday morning at 3:30 a.m. Caeden woke up because he was hungry and when Denae picked Caeden up he felt really warm. Denae took Caeden's temperature and it was 103 degrees. Denae still fed Caeden and then woke me up to tell me. Caeden was bundled up all night so we thought that maybe he was warm because of that (wishful thinking). Therefore, we took the blanket off and unzipped his outfit to see if his temperature would go down. However, that didn't help so we decided to head to the emergency room at UNMH.

We arrived at the emergency room and were seen right away. They took blood from his broviac and also poked him and took blood from his hand while putting an IV in. Then they did a chest X-ray and a lumbar puncture to rule out meningitis. Both of the blood cultures take 24 hours for an initial report to see if bacteria grows and a full 72 hours for a full report. They were trying to get us a room in the general pediatrics department but the hospital was packed. This resulted in us being in the ER for 14 hours while waiting for a room. Finally, we were transferred to a room at 10:30 pm.

Caeden has been put on a stronger antiobiotic than what we were giving him at home. The first report on the blood culture was negative which was great news. However, at 2:30 this morning the nurse informed us that the blood culture from Caeden's Broviac came back positive and he has an infection which was what caused the fever. He has a staff infection in his central line.

We spoke with Dr. Mcloughlin this morning and she said that she needs to give the blood culture another 24 hours to see exactly what kind of bacteria grows so that she can narrow the infection down to something specific. Once she knows this information she will know how to treat the infection. We will probably be in the hospital for at least another couple of days but it is hard to know the extent of our stay at this point.

Caeden has been doing really well since his last fever. He has been eating very well and has been smiling and talking a bunch. He is a pretty resilient little guy.