Wednesday, September 7th - Day 80 Update

Hello again,

Well, our girl Tori ended up sleeping all night and for just about the entire day as anticipated. She has been solidly resting as well with a heart rate range of 85-95 and a breathing rate between 12-18 breathes per minute. Her high temperatures stopped around 11:00am this morning.

Her blood cultures taken Monday night are still negative for any growths but her lung cultures taken the same night have turned positive for the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa. So Tori does have a pneumonia but her breathing and blood oxygen levels are still great. We pretty much knew something was in her lungs due to the green color and thickness of her Phlegm. So unfortunately, it appears Tori did aspirate her vomit after all... But thankfully, at least so far, we haven't had the extremely nasty Ecoli or Cocci bacteria that has caused Tori disastrous trouble in the past... The primary reason we gave Tori the strong Zosyn antibiotic immediately was to counter those two bacterias. Please hope and pray they do not appear and attack Tori's system once again. We have given Tori a new antibiotic Clindamycin to counter the Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

The cloudiness seen in the chest x-ray they took on Tori also identified the pneumonia in Tori's lungs. It also happened to point out another, totally unexpected issue which was later confirmed with a KUB x-ray of Tori's stomach. The GJ-Tube placed yesterday into Tori's small intestine has worked it's way back into Tori's stomach... Yes, it's true and unbelievable since Tori hasn't really even moved at all since that placing!! The CMU medical doctor Tom met with Peter from radiology to discuss the already unplaced GJ-Tube. Apparently, the external entry to Tori's stomach is in a very awkward position... The bend needed for the J-Tube to go directly into the stomach and straight into the small intestine is too sharp and cannot be accomplished. So a loop of the J-Tube is needed inside Tori's stomach to get the correct angle of entry into the small intestine. The loop in Tori's stomach is the issue here because the stomach naturally extends and contracts and this motion is basically pulling the J-Tube right back into the stomach. Soooo, I've requested a meeting with the GI doctor and GI surgeon tomorrow to discuss a 'real' fix to this issue. We obviously cannot have the J-Tube slippage occur over and over... An NJ-Tube through Tori's nose was mentioned as an alternative but that isn't a long term solution. We need this fixed now, the right way. Hopefully they will have alternatives to option 1 which is to go into surgery again, cut a new hole into Tori's stomach and sew up the old one... argh... We shall see.

Alright, Tori is still in a deep state of sleep so I'm going to try and go to sleep now as well in case she decides to wake up in the wee hours of the morning... It also appears we will be here for a few more days at the least.

Thank you for the continued prayers and support and believe me, we are trying to get out of the PCMC as fast as we can!!

-Tim