Post BMT Day + 133
Post BMT +133
Day 8
The last couple days have involved much waiting. Waiting to see if cultures grow. Waiting to see if fever returns. Waiting to see if Tate will tolerate J tube feeds. For pain meds to work….to see if Tate will eat or drink anything. To see if her lines hold. Waiting for labs and x ray results. And each day, we slowly check the boxes as we get the answers only to do it again the next day.
Tate is running low grade fevers again this evening. She hasn’t eaten more than a tiny bite of melon in the last two days (which promptly made her sick) or drank more than a few sips of liquid. The nausea is pretty steady and her body has flipped from retaining everything we put in it to turning it into water and getting rid of it.
Tate lost both her IV’s this afternoon and evening. We learned that Nutrition through peripheral lines burns after a bit. Resource will come in during the night to draw the nightly fresh cultures and start new lines. It’s been taking 2-3 tries to get anything, even with the resource team (who are called for all difficult iv starts and blood draws) so we are quickly using up the prime real estate. She is scheduled to go back under sedation Friday to have a PICC line placed in her arm. So we just have to make it until then. The plan is to use that for a few weeks then potentially have another central line placed.
The flu-ish body pain seems slightly better while the stomach discomfort remains. Tate did sit up for about 15 minutes this evening to create some slime that childlife brought in for her and to peek at her phone. That is a positive! It was nice to see her eyes and have a little conversation out of her.
Cultures from her lines continue to come back positive. The fresh draw from a new peripheral draw last night has not grown. One more clean culture and they’ll start the countdown for discharge. It’s currently looking like next Tuesday. This is the first time we’ve had a “date” for a hospital discharge. It feels nice. Praying it sticks!