My Little Fighter

Lucas just keeps on throwing us curveballs. He's been getting treated with  antibiotics for the blood infection, but his labs were showing something weird was going on with his liver. He was put back under phototherapy to fix it and it looked like it helped, but his numbers that they've been trying to bring down shot back up again as soon as he was taken off of it. An ultrasound of his liver was done and they found a mass. The doctor was going to wait until the antibiotics were finished to look into it more because he was pretty sure it was an abscess and nothing super worrisome, but then his labs for his liver continued to worsen. The doctor decided to be more aggressive in figuring out what was going on because obviously it was causing his body distress. Lucas was taken to get a CT scan and they had to put him under anesthesia to keep him still. They were prepared to drain the abscess so once they confirmed that it was something they could drain, they did so. That's another reason they put him under anesthesia. It turned out to be what they called a cyst, not an abscess, because it wasn't filled with pus, it was filled with a reddish brown fluid. They had to surgically insert a drain because they wanted to empty it slowly. The cyst was huge though, 5cm x 6cm x 3cm. So they initially pulled out 24mL of fluid, then six hours later they pulled out another 10mL. Since then they've been pulling out less so it's emptying out and it's really helped improve his color. The fluid is filled with bacteria though. A second blood culture that they thought was negative also came back positive. The first culture they did took 1.5 days to come back positive so when the second one was negative after the same amount of time, they thought he was in the clear, but it came back positive after 2.5 days. At least the infection is slowing down. So with this cyst and the blood infection that's still there, he's getting an extra long antibiotic treatment. He will be receiving them for the next six weeks. Lucas had a central line put in the day before the CT scan because at that point they thought his blood infection was taken care of. If they don't get the infection under control soon, they're going to have to remove the central line. That's a huge bummer because it allows his medicine to go right into his core and get to work faster. We'll see how that pans out in the next couple days. And as if he hasn't been put through enough, he also had a spinal tap to rule out meningitis since that was in the group of possible causes. It came back negative so he doesn't have meningitis. 

My brain is starting to feel like mush... It's being filled with all this medical information. I know that he will get better, but right now I'm starting to lose my patience. Lucas has gone through more in less than two weeks of life than most people go through in their entire life. He's being pumped full of a giant cocktail of medications and being put through painful procedures and having to deal with lingering pain from those procedures. As his mother it's killing me to not be able to pick him up and hold him and comfort him and protect him. I have to watch him from outside of a plastic box as he winces from his waves of pain and watch him as they give him more pain medication to make him fall asleep. As thankful as I am that they can help him sleep, I hate that he has to have those drugs to force him to sleep. People say that outwardly I seem to be handling all this well. I'm grateful that people think that, because I sure don't feel like I've got myself under control. My husband is a huge source of strength for me though, and I am so grateful for his support. Without him I would be a complete basket case. 

I'm taking one day at a time and hoping each new day is less eventful than the last. It's a constant battle to remind myself that this too shall pass and I'll have my baby boy at home to cuddle with and take care of myself without a nurse watching over me. 

So here's hoping that today less happens than yesterday. And that tomorrow, less happens than today. For the sake of my sanity and my son's health.