Better Day

The level of frustration we have been feeling the last few days finally hit its high point this morning. My exhausted husband's patience was wearing thin and the third different doctor we have seen in the last 6 days must have noticed because he made a point to try and get us some answers. Surprisingly enough he turned our case over to an infectious disease doctor. We really liked her probably because she actually took 15 minutes out of her day to explain all of his results and actually allow us to ask questions. She is also running specific tests trying to identify the virus he has.

What we learned...he does have a virus and she is concerned that it may be pertussis(whooping cough). He actually had a certain type of white blood cell replaced by almost 100% lymphocytes...this is not good and why she is so sure it is a virus and not a bacterial infection. If this is the case we need to change treatment or this thing could linger for weeks. His pneumonia is still there, but it hasn't gotten worse. His blood count looks wonderful, but there is still some inflammation in his blood...the good news about this is there may be enough virus left in his body that we can actually get a true diagnosis and not just a guess. He has a rash all over his chest and around his shoulders. We have gotten 3 different guesses on what it could be and I am hoping it is the virus leaving his body. The doctor thought it was fungal from him being on so many antibiotics and we put anti-fungal cream on it...within 3 minutes it got inflamed and 10 times worse..kind of how things have gone through this entire stay.

He is officially on room air(oxygen is off)and his fluids got taken off this morning. They feel confident enough that there isn't a bacterial infection to start him back on his steroids. He is getting them through IV and in a form of a breathing treatment 3 times a day. I truly believe now that we are treating the pneumonia we will start to see massive improvement over the next couple of days. No one has said a thing about when we might get out, but John and I are thinking our best chance is sometime this weekend. As long as I am leaving with a living, healthy child I don't care how long it takes.