Another infection :(

Thursday morning when we walked in to see Jackson he was being put back into bed and was not happy. Physical therapy had put him in a chair to help him work on sitting upright and he did not seem to like this at all, so they put him in his vibrating chair but he was still unhappy. Once Jackson was back in bed he began to bring his stats back up, but not up to his usual levels and his heart rate was very high for him as it was staying around 190-205 bpm for several hours. His temperature around this time was 98.8. A few hours later Jackson's temp was up to 101.8 so the doctors started antibiotics (vancomycin and gentamicin) and ordered a sepsis workup, which included blood cultures, a spinal tap, and urine analysis. His white blood cell count was 40,000 and his CRP was 3.3, which should be less than 1. The spinal tap was very clear, which is good. About 16 hours after cultures were taken bacteria began to grow in the blood culture. By Saturday morning they had identified the bacteria as a form of bacillus. With this information, the infectious disease doctors advised for the removal of Jackson's PICC line as bacillus likes to cling to stuff. Jackson had just finished his last dose of Amphotericin B the night before so the PICC line wasn't really needed as much anyways. The doctors will continue to treat the infection with vancomycin via IV. As of Saturday evening nothing else had grown bacteria, just the original blood culture. Jackson has been coughing a lot and with his increased secretions they decided to switch him to an in-line suction catheter. Jackson is starting to look and act like he feels a little better but he still feels pretty bad. Through all of this Jackson always kept his oxygen saturations up pretty good. The lowest he went was into the low 90's but he is back up to 98-100 now. His heart rate is still very fast for him as it is staying in the 130-150 range when asleep and in the 160-180 range when awake but it is slowly coming back to within normal ranges. The doctors started Jackson on Sildenafil (Viagra) Thursday evening in hopes that it would help open up the pulmonary blood vessels therefore decreasing the pulmonary hypertension even more and aid in weaning his oxygen down from 55%. With the infection though we can't really tell if has begun to help yet or not. Jackson is no longer on any morphine as they discontinued it on Friday. Once Jackson is completely done with the antibiotics they can pull the IV lines and he will be line free. That's it for now, hopefully Jackson gets over this infection very quickly.

Love,
Adam & Kimberly