Zachary - Graphic Discussion from Dad -- Monday, March 10, 2008

It never fails, as I plan to leave town, problems arise.

A little background--the last 2 weeks we have been to the emergency room twice.  

• Zachary took his first unassisted steps and then proceeded to catapult himself out of his crib and land on his head.  (Yes, we lowered the bed)  After being checked out, no issues.  
• Last Sunday, his chest catheter snapped in two.  Luckily they we able to repair it.  
• He has been fighting a skin staph infection with every 8 hours antibiotics into the catheter.  
• Late last week, the staph entered his blood stream.  More antibiotics.  He wakes up every hour screaming from some kind of pain.  That started last monday.  

He has had a low grade fever since Thursday and on Saturday (4:30 a.m.) his chest catheter came out of his body.  He was free of tubes for the first time in his life. We put him in the bathtub (1st time) and he was crawling everywhere.

But the fun had to come to an end and the nurses showed up to put a line in his arm to be able to keep him hydrated.  This insertion took 2 1/2 hours of screaming and crying.  He could not be on his normal nutrition so they had fluids running.  He was drinking ferociously to try to hydrate his body and the wet diapers ensued.  The doctors are happy if he takes in 16 oz of fluid a day.  He drank 32 oz yesterday.  

Sun at 12:30 p.m., his vein in his arm clotted off and the fluids went into the cells in the arm making it puff up.  Had to remove the IV and call the nurses again to reinsert.  They took another 2 hours and searched his body to finally find a good vein in his hand (ouch!).  IV finally stayed in overnight and he slept a little bit out of sheer exhaustion.  

Onto the hospital today for ultrasound line studies.  Need to determine where good veins are for another catheter placement in the chest.  

Final resolution is to insert a PIC line into his arm.  Pic line is deeper than a normal IV and will support his nutrition and fats without burning his veins.  A Pic line is inserted deeper into the arm under anesthesia.  Doctors had planned to have surgery on Tuesday but they want to use a PIC line for a week or two until they can heal all of the infections and then schedule surgery later to input the new chest catheter.  

Needless to say, lack of sleep and exhaustion are taking its toll on mom and dad as well.