Infection

Yesterday evening I called to see what the spinal tap results indicated. I was once again transferred to the nurse practitioner. She said the white cells were shifted and elevated but that there were red cells present so determining how elevated was difficult. I called our sweet neighbor who always comes when we need her to come watch the big kids so both Ronny and I could go up last night. My mom was going to come but was getting over being sick.

Aaron's primary nurse was back on last night and she gave us the run down of what all the results meant. We can always count on her to spell things out for us! Shifted white cells mean that Aaron no longer has enough mature white cells to fight the infection so his body is sending immature cells to fight. This is troubling. They are hoping that whatever the infection is doesn't turn into meningitis. (me too!) The amount of blood and fluid they need to draw to run the tests is significant when you only weigh 570 grams so Aaron will most likely need another transfusion today and possibly another spinal tap. The fluid they got yesterday may not be enough to grow the cultures they need to determine what kind of infection he has. The transfusion may also be problematic with giving him his bone marrow shot. Whenever they tell me they have to run all these labs I know a transfusion is coming. You can see how pale he gets in the photo. He is blowing IV's quickly and the antibiotics he is receiving will cause that to become more problematic so they are talking about putting a pic-line back in. I would prefer the pic-line at this point just so they don't have to continue to find veins that will work. We will know what they decide to do after rounds today.

Aaron is maintaining his weight and continuing to digest his feedings so that is a good sign. Last night he was still feisty with the nurses when they needed to check him so that is also good. Until we know what is going on and that he is recovering I won't be able to hold him, which is the exact opposite of what any other mother would do when their child is sick. We pray the drugs he's receiving kick in quickly and wipe out the "bugs" as Ben refers to it.

Today Ben gets to have a trip to the doctor. Looks like his allergies are causing asthma issues. Something that has happened with all our kids thus far, we know the drill!