Escalation

We found out today that James officially has an incision infection.  He has spent the last two days trying to recover from his fever, and while he hasn't thrown up since the night we went to the ER, he has zero appetite and is very lethargic and irritable.  I have had him sleep in my bedroom again as he tends to wake up in the middle of the night, several times, crying.  We have been giving him pain meds every 4 hours, which has also been hard with his aversion to oral meds....that has gotten worse in the last two days for some reason, to the degree that we had to hold him down and stick the syringe in his mouth the other day, blowing on his nose to get him to swallow....that was a hard night.  He is so sick that he can't understand how important it is for him to take his medicine, and his natural aversion to it doesn't help at all.  It makes me so sad.

Anyhow, last night Jared and I felt like his incision was looking redder, and the top part especially was becoming more enflamed.  A few spots had bubbled up a little bit as well.  I called in to the surgeon's on-call team Friday morning, and Dr. Nigro's PA asked me to text her pictures of the incision rather than just having us come in.  Part of me wanted to say it wasn't so bad, but the other part of me knew I needed to get him checked out.  I texted her two pics, and she verified that it looked infected and to come in right away.  Jared took work off and came home to help transport us back to PCH--James was not happy about that, though I tried to focus his attention on the things he does like about PCH (thankfully, there are many things).  Upon seeing both Kristin and Orlando (two of my favorite PA's in Dr. Nigro's office), they verified it was never a vial infection, but an incision infection.  His CBC count from the ER was apparently seriously high, his incision just hadn't caught up to it yet.  His blood culture came back negative, which thankfully means its not in his blood stream or the bone.  However, his incision is definitely infected and it is not imperative that we treat this aggressively before it does move to the blood or the bone.

The doctors put James on a very heavy antibiotic, and gave us specific instructions on dressing the wound should it open (there is an extremely high chance this will happen over the weekend given how big those pockets of liquid have gotten).  If it opens a ton, we have to rush him to the ER for wound care and to biopsy the tissue/liquid.  Kristin told me to text/call her at any point this weekend if it gets redder or if the fever gets worse.  I am seriously stressed out about this, as this weekend is so busy with the Primary Program, yet my son comes first....and I am so worried this is going to massively set James back in his recovery, especially if it gets worse or opens.  The best we can do now is follow the doctor's orders and not freak out before anything freak-out-worthy happens....and even then, we probably shouldn't freak out.

So we are home now, just keeping James quiet, hydrated, medicated, and calm.  You can tell he is hurting, and I Hate that.  Thankfully, he seems to be doing better with meds today, as we went back to OJ, just not thickened at all....he earns a single skittle for each sip he takes, which is funny because he doesn't eat them-he just carries them around in a bag.  Hopefully this method sticks!

Right now, we are planning on having Jared's mom come sit with James while Jared and I go to church for the primary program...if his incision opens before then, I have no idea what we will do, as there is no one else who could possibly direct the kids the way I can.  Can't worry about that too much now, just very much on my mind.

We head back to the surgeon's office on Monday, to the cardiologist on Tuesday, and back to the surgeon on Wednesday, all to keep a very close eye on this.  I really hope this is the only "escalation" post I have to write.