Tag: IV’s

Recovering at home


I’m happy to announce some tremendous news! Patrick made a miraculous and quick recovery after my last post. The day after my last post, after much fasting and prayer by friends, family, and even people we don’t know, we walked into the ICU to find Patrick smiling and playing in his crib. He turned his head, saw Brian and me, and smiled. Over the next couple of days he continued to make steady improvement.

They gave him some steroids which helped reduce the swelling in his throat and his breathing became much less labored. Ear, nose & throat came and looked at his upper airway and determined that his vocal chords were ok and that, although he had swelling below them, that there wasn’t any evidence of scarring or other permanent damage. The only limitation that they placed on him was that he not be reintubated except for life-saving procedures for the next 6 weeks.

Neurology also came by several times in that day and watched as he progressed, began interacting with me, focusing his eyes, moving his arms and hands more normally… and in the end decided that there didn’t seem to be any evidence of a problem there that would merit further attention.

Next, they scheduled for him to go back to Special Procedures and to have another PICC line placed. Because his antifungal medications aren’t compatible with TPN, he needs two points of access. Amazingly, they were able to get a double lumen PICC placed. This means that there are essentially two tubes wrapped into one and placed in the same vein… instead of having a line in each arm. With that in place, they removed all of the other lines in his body.

The PICC made him sore, but by Thursday that was their primary complaint and they decided to transfer him out of the ICU into the infant unit.

Also Thursday he had a swallow study done. This means that they mixed contrast into apple sauce and put some him a bottle and had me feed it to him while they watched it go down his throat on floroscope. Having fasted or been fed by G-tube for 2 weeks, Patrick thought this was heaven and was furious when it was done. The end result was that he swallows perfectly… pretty amazing for a kid who is barely allowed to eat.

That confirmed, they started giving him bottles again. However, his gut had gone unused so long that it’s still working on recovering. We started out with just 2.5 cc’s every 3 hours…that’s about 1/4 tsp.

Saturday night Patrick’s PICC line got tugged and the vein started to swell. He woke up in the middle of the night and really didn’t sleep the rest of the night. We worried that it might need to be replaced again… but with some rest and elevation and heat, it slowly started to show signs of recovery.

Finally, Monday his electrolytes, stool output, feeds, and PICC line were all stable enough and at noon that day we were able to bring him home.

You should have seen how big his eyes got when we pulled into the garage! I was all grins and giggles when we walked into the house. As per tradition, once we got business squared away, Patrick and I curled up in my bed and went right to sleep. He slept till 5:30, completely peaceful.

We’ve been home for a few days now and are finally getting back into the swing of things. Family and friends have been great – bringing in meals and coming to sit with him during the day so that I can get things caught up around the house. He’s having a hard time getting used to sleeping through the night again. He doesn’t like being on his back since spending so much time in a bed. And I’m having a very hard time getting used to caring for a double lumen picc. But we are slowly moving forward and today, for the first time, has felt like routine again.

He needs to be seen ASAP in Seattle so that they can determine if he can be put back as status 1 on the intestinal transplant list. They are also looking at possibly listing him for a liver-intestine transplant, as well… since the problems with his spleen could be evidence of scarring in his liver. We have a trip planned from Wednesday through Friday next week… with appointments most of the day Wednesday. This will be my first time travelling alone with Patrick. It’ll be a process, I’m sure… But hopefully well worth the effort. If nothing else, it’ll be good practice for me.

It’s hard to believe that just weeks ago we were sure we’d lost our little boy. He has so much light and life in his spirit right now. He’s pretty weak still and we’re working on getting him back to eating what he had been eating before… And both of us have to get used to that line in his arm. But things in this house are calm and happy. It’s so good to be together… and so good to be home!

A lost central line

I need to stop promising to write about transplant. Whenever I do, Patrick gets sick and we end up back at the hospital.

Thursday in the middle of the night Patrick woke up crying the inconsolable cry he only uses when something is wrong. As usual, we immediately started looking for signs of a line infection. However, his temperature wasn’t even 100 degrees (100.4 is the least his doctors consider a fever) so we fed him a bit and I sat up with him and eventually he went to sleep.

When he woke up in the morning, something was definitely still wrong, but he still didn’t really have a temperature… just didn’t want me to put him down. As we always do when he’s sick, I held him and took regular temperatures. Around 10:30 a.m. his temperature hit the magic 100.4 and I started making calls to get blood cultures drawn. Usually we have some time if we catch it that quick. However, as I started to try to make plans, his fever kept rising. At 101 I started packing for the hospital, at 102 I put some hustle into it and by the time we made it out the door his temp was 103.

Being our 3rd fever in a month, I wasn’t too happy about the return trip to Primary Children’s.

When we arrived they checked his vital signs and then they did something they’ve never done before… instead of finishing the standard check-in process, the triage nurse disappeared for a minute and then came back and took us straight to a room. And not the typical room, either… They took us into one of the “resuscitation”, a.k.a. trauma, rooms. Patrick’s temp was over 104 and his pulse near 200. He had a serious infection and was in shock.

They quickly worked to cool him down with cold packs and fever reducers and eventually he was looking and feeling better.

Labwork revealed that Patrick had a yeast infection in his central line. Since yeast gets into the plastic of the line, it had to be removed. It has to stay out we are sure the infection is out of his blood. In the meantime, he has a peripheral (in the hand or foot usually) IV. You can’t give full TPN through this type of IV so he’s getting a sugar/saline solution instead.

So now we are in the hospital waiting out the infection so that Patrick can get to feeling better. He doesn’t get as much sugar as he’s used to so he’s lacking energy. The IV antifungal medicine upsets his stomach we think. He’s getting rather stir crazy. The two things that bother him the most, though, are 1) the blood draws they wake him for at 6 a.m. every day and 2) the splints on his foot and hand to keep him from damaging his IV.

He’s just not himself these days. Keeping him calm is a 24/7 job for me. I’m basically living at the hospital while Howie works, manages the house, and does his best to take care of me. But we can’t imagine doing it another way… Patrick is fighting hard to get healthy and needs support in the fight.

I have to share one example, though, of Patrick’s indominable spirit. This morning we added the IV to his hand and so he woke up to having a splint put on that immobilizes his left hand. For the first part of the day he’d look at his hand and just whimper… he’d try his best to hold it still. Finally later in the day the nurse helped me get some toys that work with the touch of a button so he could use his splinted hand to play with them. After some work with that he started to get a little more adventurous.

He got a wrapper in his free hand and was playing with it and, after some work, he managed to hold the wrapper with the fingers on his splinted hand. He worked on that for a good 15 minutes, then he reached over and grabbed my hand with his free one. Using his new skill, he put my finger where he could hold it with the fingers of his splinted hand.

Patrick is an amazing kid. This is one of the hardest trials we’ve seen him go through so far… However, tonight’s adventures show me that he is determined to push the limits that his imperfect little body give him.

We hope that he’ll be able to stay healthy for a couple more days, have a new line surgically placed midweek, and then be able to come home for the final weeks of his recovery from this infection. If any little spirit is strong enough, Patrick’s certainly is.

Broviac Line

I wrote earlier that Patrick was going to have a broviac line placed after his infection had cleared. However, since he has tiny, tiny veins it’s really hard to get a peripheral IV into him and equally hard to keep him there.

Because he doesn’t have enough of his bowel to be able to absorb nutrition or medicine that he takes orally, Patrick depends on an IV to give him the nutrition that he needs. Also, as he’s recovering from this most recent infection, he needs IV antibiotics.

When I arrived at the hospital this morning, they told me that they’d be placing his Broviac line today instead of waiting a week. He’s been stuck just so many times trying to place an IV that they were running out of places to look – and he was running out of patience for it. He went to surgery this morning to have the line placed. It goes in through a vein by his neck and is “tunneled” under his skin. A catheter, or IV tube, comes out of his chest. This is a more durable IV line that should last him several months. In fact, one requirement to take him home was to have this more durable line put in.

Patrick went into surgery a little before noon today and was in recovery by 12:15 p.m. So far he’s been sleeping quite peacefully. We expect a quick and easy recovery. As soon as he’s awake, he should be able to go back to his normal routine.

If you’d like to know anything more about the line, this link will take you to the info sheet that Primary Children’s Hospital gave to me.