T+169 Still on Peds

I'm sorry for not updating yesterday...it was long, and, I must admit, I was tired. Torie had a blood culture and a CSA level drawn yesterday morning, but her other labs were missed. They had a hard time drawing those, and then when we tried to get the rest, her line wouldn't work. We tried tPa (the clot buster) with no results. Karen came up from the lab to draw, and she was able to get some blood, but the results were really wacky. Now what to do? We tried more tPa, and it didn't work either. We were now faced with a dilemma. Try a new line under anesthesia (not ideal) or a PICC line (another poke)? Neither is ideal. We decided to wait until this morning and try tPA one more time, and if that didn't work, we'd look at placing a PICC line. Luckily, Heather was on, and besides being "PICC-placer extraordinaire", she is also my very best friend. I definitely wanted her to do it, because if she didn't get it, I could kick her in the shins again. I got to the hospital early this morning, and Torie and Lexie were just waking up. My cute furry puppy was laying on her tummy, and she had a curly tuft of hair poking up between her jammies and her shirt...it looked like she was wagging her tail!

Heather came in very first thing after shift change with tPA. She was getting ready to put it in Torie's line, and drew back on it out of habit. Glory be, it worked! It drew back with all the blood we could have dreamed of, just like it was supposed to. Heather and I started jumping around.."Get this! Look at that! Go grab me one of those!" and so on. Heather has been a great support (as have so many others!) through all this. We both looked at all the blood that drew back like we were looking at winning lottery numbers. So, for now, we'll stick with this line, and try to treat this infection through it. And we'll take it one day at a time.

Torie's blood culture from yesterday was positive this evening. I'm not comfortable with her being discharged with home antibiotics until she has a blood culture that is negative for 48 hours. Her CSA level has been really high...700's. I think that she was so dehydrated that her kidneys were holding on to all that CSA. Her urine output is picking up finally, and her CSA level is coming down. She'll have another one checked in the morning, as well as another blood culture. Her other labs are normalizing a bit. She has been up with PT, and she's moving a little bit more. Today she also had a visit from Robin, one of the Wound Care nurses. Torie has a granuloma at her G-Tube site - the edge of her site has extra tissue coming out around it. Robin cauterized it with silver nitrate, so hopefully it will heal up and start looking a little better (Don't freak, Kim - I'll explain it more in depth to you. [Kim and Pat are looking at a G-Tube for Joseph.] It's not a big deal!) and Torie has special "pink button cream" to go on it. She's taking baby steps, but that is what it takes to go on after BMT.

Please keep up those prayers for Torie, and for her friends. Josiah got his line out today - Way to go, our dear twin-triplet! Torie has always been about 2 weeks behind Josiah. I hope it's still that way! Send some extra happy thoughts that her blood cultures come back negative soon so she can get home...Thanks! Vic-Torie!