Saturday, September 10th - Day 83 Update

Hello everyone,

Since Tori slept very little for Maria and the nursing crew on Thursday night and she was up most of the day Friday I expected her to sleep alot during my shift Friday night and she didn't disappoint. Tori went to sleep at 10:30pm after receiving only her Benadryl and Melatonin 'cocktail' and slept very soundly until 3:00am when she woke herself coughing. We gave her a Valium to get her sleeping again around 4:00am and she slept fairly consistently until 12:30pm. Again, resting like this is very good for Tori and it allows her to heal in a quicker fashion.

Tori's vitals stayed great throughout the rest of the day and her oxygen intake was lowered to 30% which is barely above the 21% oxygen intake for standard room air. She maintained a 94-98% blood oxygen level while on this intake which is excellent!! The Phlegm removed from her lungs has now returned to the white and more saliva like texture as before. Again, a very good sign. She is now coughing much less and when she does she can generally clear herself and no additional suctioning is needed. So by all indications her pneumonia is residing. The Clindamycin, Zosyn and Vancomycin are doing the job against the Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Ecoli and Staphylococcus aureus bacterias. All of your prayers for Tori are also being answered!! Thank you all!!

Tori's blood cultures were thankfully negative once again!! Each day blood cultures are taken and many times per day I ask the CMU nurses or doctors to check the growth results. They simply check the results on the hospital computer system and they are probably tired of me inquiring but if a positive result appears, time is of essence. I'm hoping to never see that positive result again of course.

Tori remained awake during the rest of the afternoon and her vitals stayed steady and fine but she is definitely feeling pain somewhere in her body. She winces and grimaces periodically when the pain occurs and the doctors nor us can pinpoint where the pain is originating from... It appears to be in her stomach region. We tried stopping her feeds but it didn't seem to help. We noticed a slight bedsore on her lower back so we kept her on either her left or right side but it didn't help either. We, as well as the doctors, are at a loss on where the pain is occurring... It is very frustrating to say the least. We will be running some blood tests tomorrow to check Tori for Pancreatitis. Rather than using Dilaudid today to ease Tori's pain we tried Loretab instead. Dilaudid typically knocks Tori completely out but we were more interested to see if the pain actually went away while she was awake. The Loretab kept her awake but didn't seem to ease her pain unfortunately... Zofran was also given prior to remedy any nausea.

Tori's Bilious output for her stomach seems to also be diminishing and the light green color is much more like normal for her. She will remain on a continuous drain indefinitely.

To summarize, Tori's pneumonia battle is going very well and we are optimistic but Tori's discomfort and pain points are still unknown. Some of her behaviors are completely different than they were prior to Monday. For instance, the painful eye wince she demonstrates has not been seen before, the completely straight and stiffened arms have not been seen before, her very negative reaction to touch has not been seen before. We are dealing with new and puzzling behaviors now and we have no answers. Tori's advances during the two weeks prior to Monday are no where to be found... These health setbacks are extremely frustrating because this valuable time should be spent on therapy and rehabilitation and it's not being spent there... We are trying to continue with much of Tori's therapy related exercises but it is very, very difficult given her condition. We can only hope and pray for more answers tomorrow.

Thank you all,

-Tim