Another Tough Weekend

It's been over 2 weeks now and Noah is still in hospital. Last weekend, he seemed to be improving on the TPN. He finished his week of antibiotics for his line infection on Monday. Then on Wednesday evening Noah began spiking fevers again. New blood cultures were drawn from his central line again and he was restarted on the antibiotics. Turns out he was septic AGAIN!His cultures came back growing both Staph and Strep this time. He continued to spike higher and higher all week and his hemoglobin and platelets continued to drop. On Friday evening he was given a blood transfusion, and on Saturday he really began to deteriorate. So unfortunately, he ended up going the to OR on Saturday afternoon to have that nasty line removed. Within an hour of coming out of surgery, he was improving dramatically! It was tough to lose this line after only having it for such a short amount of time, but it was definately the right decision. The surgeon put in a temporary femoral line. So once Noah is over this infection, he will have to go back to the OR for yet another surgery to have a new permanent line put in. Unfortunately, Noah needs his line to live, so although the risks are high, it is still his best chance. A silver lining in all of this, is that his blood sugars seemed to have settled and Noah hasn't had any lows for a week now.

Noah also had an echocardiogram done today to check for clots in his heart. He has another small clot there, so that line would have had to be removed anyways. We do not know yet how long he will need to be treated with IV antibiotics and blood thinners. He also had a gallium scan done to search for any other hidden sources of infection and we are waiting for results. So we do not know yet how long this hospital stay will extend. We are tired and frustrated and desperately hoping for a break from all this. Thank the Lord for those "Noah smiles" that pull us through each day.