We Can't Say Thank You Enough

Now that the Vanderbilt hospital time is over, we probably will take a break from posting for a while, but before we do, we have many people to thank. Plus, we have a few thoughts.

Our thanks are in no order, except the first, and we can't possibly mention everyone by name, but we do need to mention a few. First, we want to thank God for carrying us through this. There were so many times we were destroyed emotionally and physically. Had it not been for our Father giving us strength, we could not have made it.

We want to thank Alex, our son, for showing us the adult he will be in a matter of months (we count babies' ages in months up to 24; Alex is our baby and will legally be an adult in less than that). We are very proud of our son, who never complained, who prayed for his little sister, and who handled all of his responsibilities and inconveniences so well.

Thank you Jim and Sandy (Julie's parents), who gave their vacation time and lodging to give us a getaway, and provided babysitting so we could get away. Thanks to Charlie & Mary Lou (Aaron's parents), for taking care of Alex and letting us not have any worries back home. Thanks to Brett Hyder, Craig Bennett, and Lee Arrowood for getting Alex to Nashville and back home for us, and thanks to the many who offered to help with this.

Thanks to all the people who came and visited at the hospital. We were surprised to discover how many friends we have in Nashville. Thanks to everyone who called, texted, emailed, facebooked, and commented on here your words of encouragement. We read everyone, and I plan to put them all in a single document to print and keep.

Thanks to everyone who prayed. Julie had the idea of creating a facebook "event" to pray for Audrey. Between the two of us, we were able to invite about 700 people we know who are on facebook. Over 875 joined and said they would pray, and judging from the list at least half were people that were invited by other people. We also know our church, our sunday school class and our small group were all praying. Also, there were a huge number of people who put us on their church prayer list. One friend of ours who travels with a Milligan College singing group said, "You guys are sure well connected. Every church we've been to for weeks is praying for you all." By our own estimate, we believe thousands, if not tens of thousands, having been praying for our family.

Your prayers were heard by God and felt by us. Thank you.

Audrey is continuing to do well. She will be on her IV antibitoitics for about another week. She's still pretty cranky at times, but her personality is coming back, and each day we're seeing more and more adjustment.

I can't complete my blogging about this adventure without passing on an observation. Literally thousands, and probably more joined together reaching out to their heavenly Father in one effort, regardless of what state, country, church, movement, or denomination they belong to. That is the church that Jesus established. I know we have doctrinal differences, and that won't change anytime soon, but please know that while we may have these differences, we are to function as one body, as you have during this time.

We all serve a risen Savior, and we are all mandated to love His children. Thank you for loving us.

Home Again, Jiggity Jog!

We are very excited to announce that we arrived home this evening around 9:45! Audrey slept until Knoxville, where we stopped to eat. She then cried most of the rest of the way. We got in and had a chance to spend a little time with Alex, administer her IV antibiotics and now it's time for bed. Audrey hasn't seemed to get over the long car ride yet. It may be a long night. We'll hopefully post more tomorrow. Thanks again for your prayers.

A Difficult Weekend

Sorry for the delay between posts. It's been a difficult weekend.  I have been sick since Saturday evening, but I'm starting to do some better.  Julie's parents headed back home on Friday, thinking at that time, we'd be heading home today.  Not long after they left, we found out that we'd be heading home on Tuesday. Sandy came back yesterday to help Julie with Audrey, since I have been exiled from the hospital.

Audrey had a low fever last night, and the nurse mentioned not putting the pic line in until tomorrow morning, which we think means she won't be discharged until Wednesday.  As of right now, I haven't heard anymore from Julie, which means she hasn't heard from a doctor yet. 

Please continue to pray for us.  I know what a toll this is taking on both Audrey & Julie.  Audrey has come to despise the hospital room.  When she is in the stroller and out of the room, she is a completely different person and very happy.  When she's in the room she ranges from cranky to just plain miserable.  It was hard enough to hear setback after setback when Julie & I had each other right there to rely on, but now Julie's dealing with all of this with me only accessible by phone.  I am so thankful for Sandy for coming back down to help out.  

Please also keep my grandmother in your prayers.  She was admitted to the hospital this weekend in Erwin.  I've been told she's doing some better.  And, please keep Alex in your prayers.  We miss him greatly and just want to get home to him and get our family back together.

Thank you all for your prayers.

22 Days Later

That's a little misleading. We haven't been here that long yet, but that is the new target date - next Tuesday. So far, neither culture drawn directly from Audrey's vein have shown anything, but they identified the bacteria that has been growing in the culture from the IV line as staph, and not just any staph, a particularly nasty one along with a fairly mild strep bacteria.

Being very clear here - Audrey DOES NOT CURRENTLY HAVE A STAPH INFECTION. A sample of blood taken from her IV, which was removed right after drawing the blood, had staph & strep bacterium. The fact that none is growing in the blood not taken from this line, means she does not have these bacterium in her blood. Around 4 pm tomorrow, both cultures from her blood will be 48 hours old, and if they continue to show no bacteria at that point, this is definite that she does not have either of these infections - great news!

However, because this staph is a serious one, and given the fact that it was found in a line that was in her body, no chances can be taken. Not treating her with antibiotics for this staph is way too risky after heart surgery. So, Audrey is on a 14 day run of IV antibiotics. Another bit of good news is that although this staph is a serious one, it is pretty "sensitive" - meaning easy to knock out.

The antibiotics they started Wednesday at midnight is the one needed for this, so we're already 2 days into it. The plan is to put in a "PICC line" (new more permanent IV), monitor it for a day, and send us home Tuesday. The home infusion company will come to the hospital and train us on how to administer the IV ourselves, and we will take care of administering the antibiotics through her line at home for a week.

So, even though Audrey is most likely perfectly healthy, we are erring on the side of caution. It was not at all easy to hear that this healthy child would have to be here four more days, but we talked this over with her cardiologists and infectious disease specialists and we all agree this is best for her.

I have decided to stay through the weekend. Some of the doctors are saying we'll go home Monday and some are saying Tuesday. Hopefully it will be Monday, but we've learned not to get our hopes up, so we assume the longer of the two.

Please continue to pray that no bacteria grows in the blood samples and that this IV treatment goes smoothly. Please also pray that we get out of here on Tuesday as scheduled with no more setbacks.

Potential Good News

There is a possibility that Audrey doesn't have an infection at all. The doctors told us this morning that the bacteria that was growing was from the blood from the central IV line that was removed last night, and that there is a possibility that the bacteria is from a contaminant in the line and not actually in her body.

So, last night before they started her antibiotics, they drew some blood directly from her vein and not through an IV. This blood was put into culture to see if bacteria grows in it. If it does, Audrey has the infection and everything is as I said in the last post. If no bacteria grows, then it was a contaminant and Audrey doesn't have an infection.

If she does not have an infection, we should be able to come home sometime this weekend. They hope to be able to tell us for sure which it is by tomorrow. Please pray that it was a contaminant and not an infection.

Thank you all again for your prayers.

Please Continue to Pray

We just had a doctor report to us that a bacterial infection has grown in the blood culture that was taken from Audrey's IV line.  They are speaking with a cardiologist, and IV doc and an infection doc about the right antibiotics to start her on tonight.  They are also going to draw blood for another culture. This time directly from her vein to determine if the infection is in her blood stream or just where the one line was.  They also said by tomorrow, the bacteria will have grown more, giving a better indication of just exactly what she has.  At least this is my understanding of what I've been told.

It is very good news that they caught this before Audrey started showing symptoms of illness (her temperature has returned to normal after that one reading), so they can begin treatment right away, and we are very thankful for that.  

I am currently trying to stave off feelings of guilt for trying to get us home.  I know my motives were to get her in an environment where she'll eat & sleep better.  I am reminding myself that, even though I asked if we could go home and treat any possible infection there, I did agree in the end that staying was in her best interest. 

Please pray for Audrey, and that this infection can be killed quickly.  So far, the doctors haven't said anything that is scaring us.  So far, everything sounds very treatable. Please pray that this is and continues to be the case.

Please also pray for our family.  As you know Alex has been staying with my parents, who have been so wonderful in helping out, and Julie & I have both missed over two weeks of work now.  We've done some work from here, but in comparison to our regular routine, we've done very little.  The doctor said that nothing is definitive at this point, but we could be looking at staying until the antibiotics run their course, which would 5-7 days, depending on what she's put on.

At this point, our best option for our family and for the camp, seems to be for me to head home in the next day or two, if Julie's mom is willing to stay here with her.  We're talking about our options now.  It kills me to think of leaving Audrey here and leaving Julie, but it also kills both of us to think of being away from Alex this much longer. Please keep our decision making in your prayers and working out all of the logistics to follow through with our decision. 

How's that for asking for lots of prayers?  Other than this infection, which again does not seem to be showing symptoms of illness, Audrey is doing really well, and for that we are so thankful! And we are so thankful for all of you!  It is overwhelming and humbling to know that there thousands of people praying for our family.  Thank you.

Another 48 Hours

No, not the sequel to the movie starring Eddie Murphy & Nick Nolte, which by the way was not near as good as the original 48 Hours; not that I would watch a rated-R movie like that and enjoy it.

No, this "another 48 hours", refers to the news we heard this morning. Audrey was set to go home this morning, and from everything we can tell and everything the docs tell us, she doing great. But, at 4 am the nurses came in to get Audrey's temperature and blood pressure. Blood pressure was good. The temperature was low, and the doctor who came in soon after explained to me that a temperature that low can be as much of an indicator of an infection as a fever. So they ordered up labs on blood, and cultures on her urine and fluids from her IV.

The results from the blood came back negative (which is good unless you're Michael Scott or George Costanza), but the cultures take 48 hours, so that's how long they want us to stay now. 48 hours ends around 6:00am Friday morning.

I joined in on "rounds" this morning when the doctors discussed Audrey to see if I could convince them to let us go on home, and take her to her doctor if they called and said the cultures showed something. They said that heart surgery patients are at a higher risk of infection and that they couldn't let us go with a potential indicator of infection still there, but if things were still OK tomorrow morning they would consider letting us go after 36 hours.

This is not what we wanted, but would still be helpful. She would get to go home and sleep in her bed and we've promised her we won't come in every two hours to check her vitals, wake her up at 5am for a chest x-ray, or any other check unless she cries for us. Audrey is pretty sleep deprived at this point. She's shown very little interest in napping during the daytime hours, and between midnight and 7am seems to be the time to play "I'm just gonna have a quick listen" for everyone wearing scrubs within a one-mile radius.

It was so bad yesterday morning (5 doctors in a row, about 20 minutes apart each coming to take a "quick listen"), that in the wee hours this morning I went to the overnight resident doctor and asked that they all come at the same time or only one do the listening and tell the others what they heard. This doctors was so great about it, she took a listen then and we didn't see any other doctors for 4 hours letting Audrey get back to sleep.

Audrey's appetite has also not picked up to where it was and we all agree, doctors included, that getting out of the hospital and getting back into a normal routine will help this greatly.

The really good news is that Audrey is fine, the doctors don't think there's much to worry about. They are just being cautious, which we appreciate, regardless of how frustrating or depressing it may be.

Please pray Audrey to get more sleep and to eat more. Please also pray for our tolerance, which is being stretched. I'll also ask you to pray for the many people we've met whose children have just as serious conditions as Audrey, but with less favorable outcomes. There are many here who are hurting greatly - too many to mention specifics. It really opens your eyes to how this is ongoing, not just when we are in the hospital with them.

Unless something new happens, hopefully our next post will be to say we're headed home. For now we're gonna hang out. Maybe I'll go rent 48 hours.