Isolated

Last night as Rocky was driving home from the hospital they called. Rocky had been there all day and the day had gone pretty well. After he left they got a positive culture report. Apparently Madden's cultures from the breathing tube had grown some kind of bacteria that in incredibly contageous. So late last night they moved Madden into an isolation room. Now to go in and see him everyone needs to gown up and wear gloves and a mask. It can be treated with a common antibiotic and clinically he doesn't look worse so they aren't overly concerned. However, the concern I have is the potential that this may push back Madden's surgery date. Initially I didn't want the surgery day to come...however now that I have accepted it is going to happen I just want to get it done and get past it. The echo ended up being postponed until today because Dr. Smallhorn (the most experienced dr in the world at reading 3D echos and looking at valves in the heart) was tied up.

So this morning between 9 - 11 about 5 cardiologists met in Madden's isolation room for the echo. For this echo Madden had to be sedated and paralyzed. When they were done Dr. Smallhorn said they would go reconstruct the images and then let us know the results later in the day. We never ended up getting the actual results today but were told that preliminary looks showed that their didnt seem to be a reason that the valve should stop the repair from being done. Good news.

We were also told today that his xray looks very wet today. Over the last 24 hours Madden's fluid balance was positive 250. Which is way too much for Madden. He is so puffy he can barely open his eyes. It is awful to see. They think the reason his xray is so wet is because he is so positive and not because he has an infection in his lungs. They increased his lasix today to try to get him more negative. Hopefully tomorrow his xray looks a little bit better and Madden isn't quite as puffy.

Dr Rebeyka (the cardiac surgeon) poked his head in the door and told us that he has sat down with the person who had done the MRI and went over the report. He said that the left ventricle looks much bigger than the numbers show so the MRI people are going to recompute the numbers to see how big that LV actually is. He thinks it will be big enough to do its job. More good news.

The infectious disease people came by the look at Madden and see about the positive culture. They feel that this bacteria has just collinized in the breathing tube and that he is not actually infected. They are going to start him on a antibiotic to kill the bug anyways because they know how important it is that he get to surgery soon.

Three of the intensivists in the unit told us that they don't think the positive bacteria culture or the wet lungs are reason enough to delay surgery. However the final decision is up to the surgeon. I am just hoping the surgery is done before Tuesday so that Dr Cave (one of Madden's primary doctors) will be with him in the OR. We should know more tomorrow.

Madden we love you as big as the sky. Sleep tight my little bug. xox.