Bought ourselves an ICU visit

After the routine appointment yesterday, while heading home, we got a call stressing the need to go to the ER for possible admission because labs showed elevated WBC. We actually went home first. We had planned on going to the pool to see everyone for a neighbor's birthday party after being gone the whole month, but plans change. We called our amazing neighbors, Robbie and Debbie, and they came to get Jackson. We then packed a few items for ourselves. We made it to the ER at Emory-John's Creek just before 8. We were the only people there and Jason's license and insurance wasn't even copied before they were taking us back to a room. Thank you Dr. Fournier for calling ahead!

In the ER, they did a sputum culture, chest xray, started an IV and began antibiotics and fluids. The chest xray show "streaks" of pneumonia in the right side. Jason's heart rate was in the 130s. He got a one time dose of rocephin in the ER, and 2 antibiotics have continued since then: vancomycin and cefepime. These are broad spectrum while we continue to wait for cultures to come back. Cultures of blood and sputum go in a petri dish and have to grow bacteria. Then they put antibiotics on it to see what works. When they find out what works and we have had no fever, they switch to oral antibiotics and send us home. This is the plan!

We got assigned a room and headed up between 9 and 10 last night. We are in the ICU because trach patient's automatically get assigned ICU status. So, heart monitor, hourly blood pressures, bright lights.....again. Overnight, Jason states he does "feel better," his heart rate has decreased to the 90s, and his highest temperature has been 99.7. One of the antibiotics doesn't always like the kidneys, so they are doing some kidney function tests via blood work often. Tonight, prior to the 4th dose, they will draw a blood level to make sure the dosing is correct (for the medical folks, he is getting 1 gram every 8 hours). We got a few hours of sleep last night and I did leave the hospital midday today to get some equipment. We (YAY FOR THINKING AHEAD) made a "sick box" when we first started getting supplies. We planned to get a few extras of items with deliveries so that if Jason got sick, we could literally toss everything in the trash and start over fresh. We sterilize and reuse a lot of the supplies. It actually felt good today to toss things. I like new and shiny :) Anyway, I brought that box to the hospital so that we could set everything up and not re-infect.

GO AWAY PNEUMONIA!

Our night nurse tonight wrote this on our board:

He has some high hopes (and so do we) with going home before Monday, but we do have a very important 1pm appointment that we REALLY want to make!