So Saturday night, early Sunday morning Josiah continued to struggle with his breathing. At about midnight Sunday morning his oxygen sats began dropping regularly.. After about an hour of them hanging around mid 50's to 60's Dr. Walsh decided to try giving Josiah some blood because he had shown in a lab that his blood count was low. His hope was if we gave Josiah more blood volume there would be more oxygen running through his body and hopefully bring up his sats. We left that night as they started the blood transfusion. We got a call from the hospital at 4am saying that pushing the blood through his IV's blew his veins and so they were no good any longer. So we were again without IV access. Our nurse called to warn us the the doctor was going to try to get a central line placed and that this might tip Josiah over the edge as far what he could handle on his own. From what we have been told they tried for several hours to get a central line in and failed, finally ending up with just another peripheral IV. So they were never able to give Josiah the blood transfusion and he was just too warn out from the stress of the night and so he had to be reintubated at about 7am.

That has been difficult to go back to the breathing tube. It means we can't hold him anymore and he just seems agitated by it as well. He looks much better as far as how he is breathing and his oxygen sats are back up into the mid 70's, his color is more pink. Through all of this they sent blood cultures to rule out the possibility of an infection as the cause for his downward trend over the past couple of days. Those came back last night and showed positive for an infection in his bloodstream, so we are starting antibiotics to clear it up. Although this is not good I'm hopeful that it gives us a reason for his struggle past couple of days and that when the infection clears up we will be able to re-extubate and get back to where we were.

So in light of my last post where I explained all the things that were taken out of Josiah, he now has his breathing tube back, a chest tube back, a central line back, he's back to receiving morphine regularly to keep him calm. It feels like a huge step back, but no worries we will get there again! We'll just keep on waiting.

Erin Wilson

erin@ridgeviewchurch.net

(864)640-7434