Thumbs Up

Today we made it 24 hours with NO GROWTH on Ashley's blood cultures. Woohoo!
I think that deserves a thumbs up!

If we make make it 72 hours then the scheduled stop date for our current IV antibiotics is Friday. That means we will have our first night of full rest in 31 days. Woohoo! I think that deserves a thumbs up as well!


Ashley's echo cardiogram showed no vegetation on her heart valves. Woohoo! I think that is another thumbs up.


We aren't naive enough to think that the infection is clear. It is more than likely just being held "at bay" from the high amounts of antibiotics we are running through the line, but its a start. We are hopeful that it won't surface again, but it very well may. She is running some low grade fevers in the afternoons and that is not what we had hoped for.

We have discussed running a continual drip of vanc into one of her lumens in order to keep her infection free and in theory it sounds good. Problem is that it comes with some big potential issues. It could possibly provide us more time with the lines life span, but it may very well just allow her staph to develop a resistance to vancomycin. In additions to the vanc we are running Rafamphin. We are using vanc locks in the lumens when we aren't infusing through them and we are also alternating the lumens with the different medications since we aren't sure exactly what areas the staph is stuck too.


I'm not sure what the future holds for us. For Ash. I just know that today I'm grateful for the smiles and the laughter and the time we had together. Just a day at a time. A day at a time. No looking ahead. Concentrating on today and not missing out on it. Its just too sweet to let it pass us by while worrying about things we can't change. I think that deserves a thumbs up, don't you?