RANT

Whew! We made it through the week and I didn't have a meltdown. Well, almost. Earlier this week, Dr. Kirk called me at work and said Logan was running a fever and she wanted to run every test immaginable to figure out what was wrong with him (including another spinal tap). I gave her consent because it is better to be safe than sorry.

In hindsight, I should have asked her if they took his temperature more than once to see if it was measurement error. (A week or two earlier we took Logan's temperature and it was over 100 deg. F and took it again an hour later and it was normal. Turned out that his temperature probe wasn't on him correctly and his bed got a little warm).

They grew a blood culture and "found" an infection in his blood ("found" because they generally will do several cultures to make sure they didn't contaminate it). And off goes Dr. Kirk following the trail of possibilities down to the very end (ignoring the fact that Logan was acting like a well baby and had no symptoms of being sick). They also took an x-ray of his belly and decided that he looked like he had the same thing his sister had (in spite of the fact that he has been digesting breast milk fine for the past 4 weeks). Two days later when Logan is still fine and not "clinically sick", Dr. Kirk is scratching her head and they decide that what they thought they were seeing in his xray was really where his diaper was folded over... By the end of the week, Logan was doing even better than he was the first day, especially with his breathing, and his second blood culture was negative (smells like they contaminated it).

After all that, they decided to do a third blood culture which we will know the results of by Monday. Here's the kicker, they were talking about putting him in the "sick baby" pod for babies with contagious infections and leaving him there until he leaves the hospital. WHAT? You want to put a healthy baby that you can't prove is sick in the sick pod?? This is ludicrous. We argued with the nurse and doctor all day. Finally, after we returned from dinner, we got to talk to the charge nurse (who must be able to get our concerns to the right people). She listened and seemed like she was going to do something to help us. If his culture comes back positive on Monday they will likely move him. We are very frustrated. Here's the data again and you can decide

Logan had a fever.

Not sure if it was a real fever or it was measurement error.

Fever was gone an hour later.

First blood culture grew bacteria.

Not sure if the blood culture got contaminated.

Logan's vitals look good.

Xray looks like intestine problems similar to sisters

Logan has been feeding on breast milk for four weeks

Intestines seem to be working for past four weeks evidenced by lots of messy diapers

Logan's blood gasses are good.

Probably mis-read the xray. What they thought was a problem area was most likely where his diaper was folded over.

Logan's ventilator rate is as low as they can go without taking him off it.

Second blood culture didn't grow anything.

Third blood culture pending.