Thursday, March 11, 2010

Searching for a Source of Fevers

The results of the CT scan yesterday did not give a lot of insight into the source of Lynnea's most recent fever spikes (overnight last night she spiked to 102.5, but she's been right around 99.8 most of the day today). It showed that there is still a bit of fluid around her left lung, and there is still some fluid and/or inflamation in her chest around her incision site. These things looked slightly improved from her last CT scan, but the doctors on the infectious diseases team feels that these are still the most likely sources of the infection. There was some brief talk this morning about possibly doing a spinal tap to rule out meningitis (simply because this is one of the few things they haven't tested for yet), but in the end everyone decided against it for now. There is still no plan about what to do next; we still don't have a time frame for when Dr. St. Louis might feel comfortable doing surgery on her.

She had another rough day as far as sedation goes. She was awake and crying much of the day. This, as always, was hard to watch, but in some ways it was nice to see some of her personality show through the sedation. She continually showed me her arm, which had a "no-no" on it (a "no-no" is a Velcro splint that they put on kids' arms to keep them from bending their arms, or to keep them from pulling on their IV's), and she desperately wanted me to take it off. Eventually I gave in and took it off because I couldn't handle her begging any longer. This seemed to mildly please her. I believe I also saw her sign "all done" to the nurse when she suctioned her because Lynnea wanted the nurse to stop. She also enjoyed sucking water off from a toothette (a mint flavored sponge on a stick) with me this afternoon, and even wanted to try to put it in her mouth herself (she couldn't quite manage to get it in there around the breathing tube, but that didn't stop her from being very determined to try to do it herself).

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