We are back at Childrens Hospital. And we’ve been here since Friday night.
Here is what brought us back.
This past Monday, our family doctor did a throat culture in addition to blood work and an IV. Friday afternoon they got his results back from the culture.Β Gideon has a bacterial infection called pseudomonas aeruginosa. And apparently, the only antibiotic that it’s not resistant to is an IV antibiotic called Fortaz.Β And it needed to be administered every 8 hours for four consecutive days.
Home health was going to come out to our house to do IV and the first dose…then we would have to dose him daily after that. But home health couldn’t come until Saturday; and since Gideon had not eaten since Friday morning, we went back in the ER so they could start the IV antibiotics and fluids to get him through the next four days.
Unfortunately Friday night Childrens did not start the IV antibiotics for the pseudomonas aeruginosa. Long story short, they wanted to do their own throat culture. (Which they could have done when we were here Tuesday but they said what he had was probably viral.) And apparently our family doctors results were not sufficient for them. Which meant more waiting for a new culture to grow.
In the meantime they started him on a stress dose of steroids for adrenal insufficiency… which have proven not helpful. He’s not perking up like he usually does. His appetite is not increasing like usual. He has been more irritable and fussy the past two days then he has been all week (and he had no continuous steroids when we were here Tuesday-Thursday).
We requested decreasing steroids overnight to see if that helps his irritability. All they want to do is give him more medication to compensate for the side effects of more medication. Our little guy hasn’t been on any meds for five years (except for a small time when we tried steroids and they did more harm than good…so we weaned him off).
Hopefully we will get culture results back today or tomorrow and we can either treat the bacterial infection or go home (if it is negative).
Kevin and I are discussing options for Gideon. Our next possible move could be a G-tube.
The staff here has been great, but we want to go home. Coming back to Childrens has been very disheartening. Not how I envisioned spending my Mother’s Day.