A long day

Oh what a day it has been. I am tired and worn out and exhausted all rolled into one. Despite meds and cool cloths, Alex continued to run fevers over 102.5 all night long. The doctors were in early this morning and the decision was made to go ahead with the brain MRI, spine MRI, and lumbar puncture. Alex conintued to complain of his head hurting and we waited for our time to go down. As we were getting ready to be wheeled to the MRI suite, our team came by to tell us that they were cancelling the spine MRI. After the pediatrician, Dr. Koenig and the anesthesiologist spoke they decided it was too dangerous to put Alex under anesthesia for that length of time with him as sick as he is. We got downstairs and met a new anesthesiologist. He struggled to get Alex sedated. When we finally thought we had him asleep I got ready to leave and Alex started seizing. He had several seizures and I waited to be sure he was okay before I left. This was sure not the way I wanted to start the procedure. Apparently after I left Alex woke up again and it took them quite a while to get him under a second time. So the MRI portion took a lot longer then anticipated.

In the meantime, I got called to surgery waiting to meet the radiologist who would be performing Alex's Lumbar puncture. They needed me to sign consent. As i was speaking to the IR doc I asked her to check his clotting labs that had been ordered this morning. Sure enough they were high. So with about 30 minutes until they were going to get Buggy we had to come up with a plan. After calls to several doctors we decided that we would be okay to forgo plasma and just give vitamin k once we got up to our room. So all in all th eprocedure that should have been about an hour and a half took four hours.

Alex continues to run fevers over 103 tonight. His back is swollen at the incision site. We have added a pressure dressing. We are unsure if it is "just swollen" or blood that has accumulated. We will continue to watch and make sure that is okay. From the little bit of results I have seen, it does not look like meningitis which is great. But it leaves us struggling to figure out why Buggy is still struggling.

Thank you to everyone who has checked in by phone, email, or facebook. I appreciate all the thoughts and am sorry I can't get back to all of you.

Ali