First Trip to the Emergency Room

So we experienced our first trip to the ER last night.  The sterile dressing that protects his hickman line keeps coming off.  The way his body is shaped with his Pectus (concave chest) and his protruding belly give him a lot of "curves" and in the 100 degree Arizona weather he is sweating alot.  So instead of changing his dressing 1/week we've have to change it 3 times already.  Tuesday night the home health care nurse changed it and it was a little irritated around the insertion point.  Wednesday the dressing was coming off again so I called Home health care out again.  This time the insertion area looked pretty bad.  So instead of having dinner with friends Lisa and her sons Grant and Deacon,  Coleson and I headed to PCH ER and Lisa watched Peyton for me. (Paul is traveling)

We were in the ER until about 12:30am after taking a CBC and blood and skin cultures.  They sent us home with an oral antibiotic until the cultures come back.  Dr. Aleck and Dr. Orchard think that this is just a skin irritation due to all the dressing changes and sweat but because it could be an infection they do not want to proceed with his ERT tomorrow.  So unfortunately he won't be getting treatment this week and it delays his BMT.

So we are just keeping an eye on his dressing and applying extra tape around the dressing.  As we see the tape coming up, we reapply.   I asked Home Health Care to send us different dressings.  The one we received at the ER last night seems to work better than the others.  I hope this does it as I don't want to delay any more treatments.

Otherwise Coleson seems to be doing good.  No fevers to indicate he has an infection and is generally acting like normal.  Also, thanks to Lisa for being here to take care of Peyton!  Peyton seems to be rolling with the punches pretty well and likes to tell her friends about her brother's owies.