Still breathing

I'm so glad I named my blog Just Hang On.  I couldn't have know how perfectly it would reflect our family.  Hanging on to our faith, our hopes and dreams and each other.

I'm writing tonight from my own house. Jeff spent the night with Abby at the hospital and I came home to Emily and Sarah. Sarah had a tummy bug last night and stayed home from school today, but she's fine now. Emily is doing well. She's happy that I'm here, but she's also happy that Jeff is here every night with her. Being together makes it so much easier for us when Abby is is sick.

She's doing remarkably well considering all that's going on in her little body. It is truly amazing how sick someone can get and still recover. She's fighting this and responding well to antibiotics. She actually didn't have gram + rods like we thought with the second culture, so that was good. As the bacteria grew out they realized it was the same bacteria they originally found. She had it in her urine too. The yeast was really there and will likely be our biggest problem. The infectious disease doctors told us there is only a 10% chance that we can get that infection under control with the line still in.

We are trying though. She's handling her feedings rather abysmally, making hopes of not needing the line slim. We are repeating blood cultures daily. If she has two negative cultures we can keep the line and go home on antibiotics for a few weeks. Because the chance of the yeast infection recurring in the line after stopping treatment, we are only buying the amount of time she's on antibiotics to work on feed rates. Then the line has to come out.

If we can't get negative cultures by the weekend, they have to pull the line. Apparently sepsis with fungus (hate the word) can be more serious than bacteria because it's so difficult to treat. There is also a very real possibility that it could infect future lines. There is much to think about and pray about. We need answers and wisdom as we move forward.

I feel peaceful right now. There's not good reason for it, other than a gift from God. I really needed it, even for a few hours. We're all still breathing, and remarkably, still hanging on.