Bronchoscopy and CT Scan

Today was another busy day.  Owen was febrile all night and thankfully those subsided after his 8am dose of IV Tylenol.  Now that I am typing this at 8pm, his fever is back to 103.5 with a HR of 185.  We took Owen down for a CT Scan of his lungs this afternoon and that showed the pneumonia in the lower lobes of his lungs.  We decided to go ahead with a bronchoscopy at his bedside this afternoon to get a sample of the secretions in his lungs for further testing.  The samples we have obtained so far are from the ET tube but we wanted to know what is down in his lungs since an ET tube can be contaminated.  He is currently on Vanco, Meropenem, inhaled Tobramycin, and Gentamicin.  We just started an anti fungal treatment as well (to cover our bases) and hope that all these together will kick this nasty Pneumonia. 

From a cardiac standpoint (I sound like I am in rounds).. Owen is on Milrinone, Epi, Dopamine, Lasix, and we just started Digoxin orally. He is on his anti rejection meds.  He also gets his Asprin, Plavix and Lovenox injections (twice daily) to cover his anticoagulation therapy.  It all makes for a very long day.

Infectious Disease comes by daily and asks the same laundry list of questions and ask for more cultures.  They sure love their cultures and samples.

I finally got permission to take over his nutrition and work him back up to his home tube feeds.  They were giving him a goal of 1200 cals a day and he is losing weight.  Everyday in rounds I tell them he required at minimum 2000cals a day to gain at home.  Now that he is working so much harder to fight infection and heart failure at the same time.. he needs much more nutrition.  So I get to be in charge and we'll see over the next couple days how much his tummy will tolerate.  I'd like to get him off the TPN and Lipids.

That's a wrap on our day and we are both exhausted. I know his RT and Nurse got their paychecks worth today too. :)

You can see the black space are his lungs and the white matter on inside the black space is the pseudomonas infection.  It's pretty significant and we have a lot of treatment ahead of us.  Prayers that these antibiotics will kick it and Owen will be on his way to recovery soon.

I love getting updates from home throughout the day.  Logi is becoming BFFs with Sam the Beagle.  Sam likes that Logi feeds him all day!  I'm sure this little monkey is keeping the teenagers on their toes too.

I can't wait to snuggle my little love again soon.  Kam and I talk a million times a day and I love our conversations.  Being apart is the hardest part of this journey for sure.  Tomorrow is a new day.