Re-admitted

Unfortunately, Cade was readmitted to the hospital on Thursday night. On Wednesday, I noticed that the scab on his shunt incision site looked infected so I called the neuro nurse practitioner and got an appt for Thursday afternoon because she thought that she better take a look. We were going to be in the neighborhood anyway because we had a follow-up appt with the pulmonologist. Both offices are near Children's. She took one look at the wound and said that she regretted to tell me that she thought that Cade better be admitted as a precaution. Her main concern was that the infection could move to his shunt and that would mean another surgery for a new shunt and an extended hospital stay. I agreed that it was better to be cautious so she called over to Children's and was able to get Cade a bed in ICC where the doctors and nurses already know him. I was very relieved and she was adamant that he would get the best care if he was back in ICC where they understood the issues with being a preemie with a shunt. So, Cade and I took a walk over to the ER to get admitted. Sean met us there and we sat there until 8:30 before we got moved to ICC. It was a long stressful day for all of us but by the end Cade was where he needed to be and we got to see a bunch of friendly familiar faces. They started IV antibiotics and took a wound culture and a blood culture to check to see what type of infection was in the wound. The blood culture came back negative which is good because it hasn't moved to his bloodstream. It seems to be localized and they will keep an eye on it. His white cell count was up a little last night but was back to normal today. They are hoping that this hospital stay will only be for a few days and then he'll get oral antibiotics but they need to let the wound culture grow because it was positive for infection after 24 hours. The good news is that he no longer needs to take caffeine for his respiratory drive. The pulmonologist said that we could discontinue it after we were done with the bottle but the ICC doc has discontinued it as of today because the dose was too low for his current weight. The ICC doc is also hoping to wean him from his O2, but we tested him without it and his saturation levels dropped to the low 80s when they need to stay in the high 90s. I told her all of this but she said she was still going to test it out. It would be great if he was off of the O2 but the specialist thought it would be at least another month. I spent most of the day at the hospital and headed back there this evening with Sean. It's funny because Cade seems to be eating better (at times double what he was taking at home) and on a better schedule (every 3-3.5 hrs instead of every 2 hrs). I was joking with the nurses this morning that they would whip him into shape. Apparently, before I got there he had a really good feeding. He had just started another when I got there so the nursing assistant handed him over to me for the rest of the feeding. Well, he promptly went to sleep and took about an ounce less than the feeding before. I think he just missed his mommy and wanted to snuggle. OK, that's all for now because I can barely keep my eyes open.