Mary, our little patient with tetanus is still hanging in there. Pretty much no change, which is status quo with this disease. We keep her heavily sedated as she still has spasms with even small stimulus like touch or noises. Her swallow still seems poor as she tends to keep secretions in the back of her throat. This symptom is significant because we need to see that she is protecting her airway before we can say she is out of the woods. But, on the up side we haven't seen any indication that the tetanus is progressing so we will just keep offering all the physical support we can and give her body time to fight.
Joyce, the patient with the femur fracture, has gotten worse. She was diagnosed with a "septic joint" this morning and is headed back to surgery, hopefully sooner rather than later. I've been fighting the infection for several days now but couldn't seem to get the help I needed her in Soroti. My hospital of choice, Bethesda, doesn't do any ortho and even though I took her there other day for a second opinion, they couldn't do a CBC and didn't really think she was that sick. However, over the past several days I've been giving IV antibiotics and literally liters of IV fluid daily to keep her pressures up. I'd been trying to reach the surgeon but his phone has been off for days. Finally, I just showed up at his office and met with the "resident" covering his cases. She took the cast off and pulled the pins and a RIVER of pus came out. Anyway, I'm worried for them and I know they are getting poor care. But at least she is readmitted and hopefully they will do something for her soon. We just trust God to take care of them.
No comments:
Post a Comment