Still At The Hospital

As of Sunday night, we were waiting on peds surgery to come take a look at Peyton.  We were also waiting on an ultrasound which would help them see if there were actual pockets of infection in the abscesses.  Neither ever happened by the time Monday morning rolled around.  When the pediatrician did his rounds Monday morning, he took a look and decided to scrap the ultrasound altogether.  He had surgery paged and they came to take a look.  The redness had extended beyond where it had been.  The inflammation was a lot worse than the night before.  Clearly, the infection was spreading.

Peds surgery came around and they decided that it would be best for Peyton to have a little surgery to try to completely drain the abscesses.  There was discussion about how best to do that since she's not a good candidate for anything other than a complete general anesthesia.  They decided to take Peyton up to the procedure room in the PICU where they had a doctor up there administer and monitor her with conscious sedation.  He used ketamine and propofol.  I guess he gave her a pretty hefty dose because she was still fighting after all the ketamine was administered.  I was holding her hand and she had a tight grip the whole time. She was moving around a lot.  With the propofol she calmed down some, but she never closed her eyes.  She never went to sleep.  She never lost her grip.  It lightened a little, but never lost hold of my hand!  She fought that anesthesia.  She wasn't feeling the procedure (at least not that we know) but she was not out!

The procedure went well.  I got to stay with her the whole time.  I managed to stay on my feet this time!  :)  They didn't get as much out of the abscesses as they thought they would, but they did get some out.  The surgeon left in a piece of tubing.  There's two incisions.  The tubing runs in one opening and out the other about an inch and a half below the first opening.  Then the tubing is tied together in a knot on the outside.  I guess it holds the area open to drain.

As of this morning, the inflammation is way down and the area is less red.  It's still pretty red right around the main area.  Where the redness had spread is still red, but not bright red like it was.  It also  hasn't extended beyond where it had gotten to yesterday.

She's on a couple different antibiotics for now.  I haven't had any word as to how long she will be in the hospital.

You can read more on all this over here:

http://fontenblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/gods-armor.html