August 19, 2012

Outside Temp: 61 F (It was still hot today, although I was inside an air conditioned hospital most of the day, so I didn't really care.)

What I cooked today:
Still nothing.  I think I may have forgotten how to cook.

Update:
Day 2 in the hospital:
Ryan is doing much better, as of right now (10:27 pm).  It was a very long, interesting day.

So, overnight, he continued to have fevers, although they weren't too high (in the mid 103's).  Then, around 10-11pm, he started throwing up.  Which was okay for the first few hours, but once his tummy was empty, then he started with the dry heaving.  Ugh, is there anything worse?  Of course, for Ryan, he has a problem with varicies in his esophagus (veins in the throat), which, when put under stress (such as dry heaving), have a tendency to rupture and bleed.  So, around 5am, he threw up a bunch of blood.  Lovely.

Fortunately, it only happened the once, and the doctors immediately changed his anti-nausea medicine to something stronger.  We checked his labs and his blood numbers were fine, and there was no bleeding anywhere else, so we're crossing our fingers that it was just a one time thing.

His blood cultures came back with a Staph Aureus (which is similar to staph epi, which is the skin contaminate that sometimes shows up).  It's usually associated with surgical wounds, and wouldn't you know it, we have a surgical wound that is having trouble.  Hmm, I think there might be a relation there. 

Of course, Staph Aureus is a gram-positive bug, and we usually get gram-negative bugs, so the antibiotics that we started yesterday were pretty much useless.  We switched him to the right antibiotic this afternoon, and he's feeling much better.

I feel much better as well, now that we know what the problem is, and he's being treated accordingly.  It was kind of hard last night, knowing that he'd had a few doses of antibiotics, and he was not getting any better.  We also know that it's due to the problems that we are having with his new line, not something that Patrick or I did wrong with his TPN or accessing his line (that's always a concern, with the 'could I have caused this?  or could I have done something different?' questions). 

Patrick switched with me this afternoon, so that I could not only get a night's rest at home, but I could go to the school board meeting tomorrow night, and also head over to the school tomorrow to check up on our web design class.  School starts in 3 days, and I'm actually getting kind of excited.

Of course, on the way home, it was dark and I was very cautious, looking out for deer ( I did see 2 deer in the ditch next to the road, but fortunately, none of them felt it necessary to run out into the road and get hit).  But, while driving up to the grandparent's house to get Katie and Connor, I did manage to hit a porcupine.  This thing was huge!  I guess I imagined that a porcupine would be about the size of a cat, but this was the size of medium sized dog.  Of course, he was just meandering across the road, like he had nothing else going on.  And, of course, I was going about 35-40, on the dirt road, which means that I couldn't really stop.  I slowed down a bit, and he went under the car.  I guess I managed to have the tires miss him, since I didn't hear a dreaded 'thump, thump' of him going under my tires. 

I immediately turned around (it's a narrow road, so it took about 5 3-point turns to get turned around), and I just caught him wandering off into the grass on the side of the road.  I guess even getting hit didn't phase him.  I did see where he went under my car, because there was a small patch of quills on the road.  I was just grateful there was no blood!