A little bit brighter day

January 5, 2009: This morning I went to visit Sophia and got to speak with her actual attending. Dr. Tiffany was very polite and I could tell that he was definitely working hard on her case. Her blood levels were still the same as yesterday. Dr. Tiffany said that her 5am xray showed improvement from yesterday. They would do another xray around 5pm today and again tomorrow morning at 5. If those xrays showed improvement, then they would start her feeds again tomorrow. After he came back from reviewing the xrays with the radiologist, he thought that perhaps the bowel inflammation was caused by a urinary tract infection. They started Sophia on oxacillin, gentamicin, and ampicillin. They took blood cultures and a urine culture. A machine checks those samples every 5 minutes to see if bacteria is growing. If it spots something unusual, an alarm goes off and an actual person looks at the sample. Usually if nothing grows in the first 48 hrs, then nothing will grow. I really hope that this was what caused all these new issues. I also got to speak with her new resident - Dr. Cohen. Neither the attending or the resident seemed to have any answers as to WHY her throw up would be green all of a sudden. It hasn't been green for weeks. This is still unsettling to me. Maybe we can't always know the answers to everything, but I'm concerned. I can understand how the UTI could have caused the bowel to become inflamed, but I don't understand why that would cause her vomit to turn green again. So anyway, the resident said that if her 5pm xray showed improvement that they would most likely start feeding her tonight instead of waiting for tomorrow morning (like Dr. Tiffany had told me). Both the resident and attending said that she would start her feeds again on a fair amount - maybe like 30 cc. I'm so glad that last night's nurse was wrong. BUT then our primary nurse made the comment that it might be better to try her first few feeds with only like 10 cc to see if she can tolerate that amount without throwing up.
Sophia was stuck 9 times yesterday when they tried to get her IV started and I didn't know until today that both sides of her head got shaved :( Poor little girl.
Sam and I will be going back up tonight after shift change. I'll probably update tomorrow, but maybe even later tonight. Thanks for all the prayers!