Staying in the PICU

When I called pulmonology today to let them know of Malachi's recent increased O2 requirements, we were asked to bring him in to the ER. Of course, when we arrived he was awake and sating just fine. He had a bit of a fever when we arrived, but that quickly resolved. A bunch of labs were drawn from his port and sent off. I was happy to hear that his white count was down to 22,000. This is still very elevated, but much better from the 40,000 he had last week!

Dr. N also stopped by to check in on Malachi and actually shook my hand because of the care he knows John and I are providing at home. He was very impressed that we lasted a full week (okay, almost a full week) at home and considered it quite an achievement. It's nice to hear some third-party affirmation from a respected physician that all of our hard work and love is really benefiting the health of our child. He was not too worried about Malachi's current state, but he would check in on some things and get back with us when we are at the hospital tomorrow.

Along with labs, they also took a chest x-ray and sent off a blood culture and viral swab. Chi will be in isolation for either the next 24 or 48 hours until the cultures come back negative. This means gowns, gloves, and masks for all who enter his room. Chi's lungs looked "fuzzy" on x-ray. Basically this is questionable for pneumonia, so they are going to start him on an antibiotic just in case. His lymph nodes are also a bit bigger than they've been the past few days, so they may increase the amount of steroids he is on as well.

I don't think they were really going to do a whole lot with him this evening. I know they wanted to get an arterial blood gas (which means a needlestick, even though they have port access). At least they had put a numbing agent on the area before they started finding an artery. I think he will pretty much be in observation status until they can get some results from the blood work that was sent.