Five steps backward

I thought I was going to be able to make a happy post today, because Colin gained even more weight last night and has reached a new high at 2 pounds 8 ounces. But apparently that wasn’t to be. As has been the case all along with Colin, we take a few steps forward, then a giant step back.

Last night Colin had to have another transfusion. His hemoglobin and hematocrit (red blood cell) levels had been decreasing for several days, thanks to the daily blood draws. But the doctor had been waiting to see if Colin’s body would start to produce enough new cells on his own to avoid the transfusion. Last night they decided he couldn’t, and went ahead with the transfusion. 

The transfusions make poor Colin very cranky, and we had to work hard to get him settled down last night. John had the magic touch, and after a while Colin fell asleep and had a relatively quiet night. 

When I came in this morning, the nurse told me that right before 7:00 Colin had started to get worked up. His heart rate had started to jump inexplicably a couple of days ago while he was just sleeping (rather than while he was worked up, which is typical). Now he was desatting (his blood oxygen levels were dropping) frequently. He hasn’t had problems maintaining his saturation levels since we took him off the ventilator, so this was rather troubling. 

At one point, while I was holding him, his saturation levels dropped into the 40s (they should be between 85 and 100), and we couldn’t get him back up until we increased the pressure on his oxygen. Since we were really hoping to be able to start weaning him off the oxygen soon, this was a big step back.

Tonight, when John went to the hospital for his visit, we found out why Colin has suddenly started having these problems: the doctors are pretty sure he has either a kidney or urinary tract infection. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to get a urine sample to find out for sure which, because they couldn’t find a catheter small enough to use for Colin. 

They’ve sent cultures off to the lab for testing, but we won’t get the results for three days. Rather than wait for confirmation, the doctor started Colin on antibiotics this afternoon. With luck, his infection will respond quickly to the antibiotics and clear up. But this pretty much kills our hopes of getting him off the oxygen soon, and will probably interfere with his weight gaining as well. It’s hard to muster the energy to fight an infection when you only weigh 2.5 pounds.