Sunday

We're starting to get the hang of the PICU and why they've set up the rules as they have. At first we didn't understand the rule not allowing parents in the unit from 7-8pm, or the food rules, etc, but considering the kind of patients and situations they have, it makes total sense to us now. Andrew stats-wise isn't getting better, but then again, he's not getting worse. His white count is just about the same as yesterday (the bands turned into neutrophils). The bad news is they found some fungal proteins in his blood (not necessarily indicating an infection, but evidence that he's been dealing with one), which is concerning. So far, that makes one detectable bacterial infection (Strep), one viral (Rhinovirus again), and now some fungal protein. They let us move another CT scan they wanted to do until tomorrow as well as placement of his NJ tube (they can thread a tube down his nose past his stomach to give him food, and it's less risky than an NG tube because he has less time to throw it up). They're letting us rest today.

Andrew is sleeping a lot. He seems to be unhappy when he's awake (no duh, right?), but I'm hoping and praying that things will get much better tomorrow so the docs will intervene less and Andrew can just continue to heal.

I really like our infectious disease doc. He said that a definitive diagnosis would involve a lung... he didn't even have to finish. Either a bronchial lavage or a lung biopsy would be very invasive procedures. The first one is self explanatory, but the second involves going in surgically, spreading the ribs apart, deflating the lung, then cutting out a chunk of lung. Getting back to the reason I like our infectious disease doc--he said that he really didn't care what Andrew had, just that he got rid of it on his own. He's not crazy about grabbing lung tissue, he just really wanted problems to get solved on their own as Andrew's counts go up. That was really reassuring to me because every once in a while, I've got the feeling that they just are just curious to know what it is more than being concerned for Andrew's overall welfare. I know that's not true, it's just nice to hear it.