The hospital saga continues

The hospital saga continues. :)

Rick spent Sunday and Monday night with Ricky, as well as all day Monday and Tuesday.

On Monday Ricky had his PICC line put in; that's a semi-permanent IV that goes in the crook of the inner elbow. He had a bad reaction to the goofy drops, versed. He was fine for the first dose, but after the second dose he started kicking and screaming and trying to bite the medical staff, also very confused/irrational. He's had these drops before surgeries and medical procedures at least 4 times with no problem, and after reading up in the PDR I suspect he had an overdose, but of course those Stanford folks would never admit it. It took 45 minutes for an anesthesiologist to show up and put him to sleep! 45 minutes! After the PICC line was in he slept for 3.5 hours and woke up totally fine.

On Tuesday Ricky had a chest CT. I finally found out the "why" for this yesterday. Turns out the pulmonologist suspected (and confirmed with the CT) that Ricky has bronchiastasis (not sure if I'm spelling this right) which is condition where the large air tubes going into the lungs become inflamed and produce more mucus (just what a kid with CF needs, eh?).

For his sinuses, which are causing the whole problem with his pneumonia to begin with, he is now getting Ocean spray and Afrin spray as well as his usual steroid spray, Flonase. And you must realize that 5 year olds don't take particularly well to having stuff sprayed up their nose. He is also on Prelone (prednisone -- steroids) which turns him into a monster. At least it is a small dose. A year ago he was on it for croup and he started biting and being aggressive at school! Anyway they are trying to bring down his sinus inflammation so they can get a good picture when they do his sinus CT on Monday. Yep, that's right, Monday. They won't be sending us home on Sunday because they want to sit around and twiddle their thumbs and not do the sinus CT till Monday! Argh!

So his gastroenterologist ordered a pH probe for Monday. This is where they put a tube up through the nose and down into the esophagus and measure his acid refluxing for 24 hours with a tiny computer. As you can imagine Ricky just LOVES having this tube placed. Not. After not throwing up outwardly for several years but being on reflux meds, he had this test done in February when he was in the hospital, and it showed very mild refluxing, so he was taken off his reflux meds, which was great. Two less meds. But now the doc thinks he may be refluxing internally and not actually throwing up, and this can cause him to aspirate and make his lung disease worse. So if he has even a tiny bit of reflux going on we are going to put him back on reflux meds. Probably Prevacid this time (Prilosec caused elevated gastrin levels in his
blood before).

So that brings us to a Tuesday going-home date. We will be glad to be out of there. But meanwhile Ricky will be in the hospital for his actual birthday, Sunday the 26th. Luckily I saved some presents that I will take up to him that day. :)

Rick spent the night at the hospital last night so Andy and I can go to Thanksgiving at my mom's house today. It will be a weird Thanksgiving without my dad or Ricky (my dad having died, and Ricky in the hospital). But I'm glad to be able to go. I was afraid I'd be stuck in the hospital eating their version of Thanksgiving dinner with Ricky. Eating with Ricky is not bad. Eating hospital food is! This morning Andy and I are going to briefly hit the Thanksgiving sale at K-Mart and then go visit Ricky and Rick before coming back down here for Thanksgiving.

So there's our update for now. Thanks for listening if you got this far!