Déjà vu

The blog has been a little quiet these last few days because, quite honestly, there wasn't too much to report on!  Elyse had a beautiful week -- tolerating her feed increases well and gaining weight.  She even had a couple big poops that were overdue (never thought I'd see the day when bowel movements were such cause for celebration), and her brady and apnea spells even seemed to be getting better.

Unfortunately, all that took a bit of a turn tonight.  She had a bad spell while Matt and I were visiting -- in my arms, in fact.  Her stats dipped (like they usually do), but instead of jumping back up with a little stimulation, they just kept going lower.  Then her colour started to change, and in a matter of seconds-that-felt-like-hours the nurse had taken her to start administrating oxygen and hit the alarm button that brings a whole team running in.  It was quite terrifying, and we were utterly helpless.  The only other time I have felt like that was when Emmett was born not breathing.  Children, please stop doing this to your mother!

Once they got her stable, the next question to answer was why this spell was so severe.  At this point a strong possibility is that she has developed another infection, so they decided to do another full sepsis workup -- blood and urine culture, lumbar puncture, and proactively starting antibiotics.  When you're dealing with a potential infection in such a small patient they don't like to waste any time waiting for results, and tend to start some broad-spectrum antibiotics right away just in case.  Her preliminary blood work indicated that infection was likely, but we won't have more specific information for another 24-48 hours.  Unfortunately, her PICC line had just been removed this afternoon, so they had to insert a new IV.  Apparently she has very teeny veins (go figure), so I really hope that's not something they will need to do very often.  They have also put her back on CPAP for the night, to make sure she remembers to keep breathing.

One of the most puzzling things is that this is all happening around the same timeframe as her first infection -- about to reach full feeds, TPN completed, just started milk fortifier.  I don't know how any of those could cause septicemia (or other infection), but it does make me wonder.  For some reason this seems to be the hurdle we just can't get over yet.

smiles for Mommy