A Free Upgrade is Not Always a Good Thing

Posted on February 4, 2012 by William 1 Comment

 

Wednesday morning Evan went for an echocardiogram in order to check his heart for what the doctors call “vegetation.” More simply put, they were looking for any abnormal growth on/in his heart due to the bacteria. While they were looking at his heart they also looked at his overall heart function. The results of this test were great. He didn’t have any growth in his heart and his function was not any more diminished. In order to get really clear pictures Evan had to be sedated for the echo because he moves around too much. He was given chloral hydrate and that didn’t really do much to sedate him so they also gave him some Ativan which also didn’t seem to affect him. We managed to get the echo done but it took a lot of coaxing, playing, distracting, and some holding down at the end. We came back from the echo and a couple hours later Evan was taken back to the treatment room to have his chest wound cleaned, changed, etc. He was given more sedative and after he came out of the treatment room he was very out of it for much longer than they expected, it seems that all of the sedatives finally took their toll on Evan and not only was he completely asleep but his breathing was very shallow. The staff was concerned and put him on high flow oxygen and we were “upgraded” from the general cardiac floor to moderate care so that Evan had more nurse supervision.

Thursday was a pretty uneventful day. No procedures, no events, just relaxing and catching up on some sleep. We did however hear about the identification of Evan’s little bug, Pseudomonas_aeruginosa. I won’t pretend that I know anything about bacteria and tell you about this thing…My feeble attempts at reading about it Wikipedia left me even more confused. What I do know is that we’re still waiting for some results on what antibiotic this particular thing is susceptible to and for how long. They stopped the administration of Vancomycin, it’s usually not helpful against this bacteria. The Zosyn is still being given.

Soon after 10AM on Friday Evan was taken away for another procedure. A PICC (peripherally inserted central catheter) line was put in his leg. A PICC line is much more secure and lasts longer (weeks to months) than a normal IV (a few days). It’s also much longer, a normal IV only goes just under the skin where a PICC is inserted into a larger vein and advanced through the vein until it’s very close to the heart. While Evan was in for the PICC, Dr. Hirsch, his surgeon came in and looked at his chest wound. She said that it looked as good as can be expected, there’s plenty of inflammation of tissue but the sternum is stable and she does not see any issues with the wires holding his chest together. All good news.