Home away...

From home.... Yup we are back up at Doernbechers Childrens Hospital. It all start on October 7th when Raegan went in to surgery to have her tonsils and adenoids taken out and tubes put back in her ears. The surgery went well, and we only stayed one night in the hospital. The following Monday when I went to give Raegan a bath and noticed she had a rash on the right side of her chest. Tuesday morning got up and got Raegan dressed and the rash was gone. Wednesday night Raegan went to her dads after daycare and when he gave her a bath he noticed that the shunt tubing in her chest was red and felt hard. Wednesday night Raegan didn't sleep very well, so Thursday the 14th we were coming up to OHSU to do a video interview for March of Dimes and after we finish we went down to the ER.

In the ER they took blood, did the typical x-ray and MRI and they all showed nothing. They ended up admitting Raegan to the hospital just so they could watch her and make sure nothing was going on. My gut instinct was that some how Raegan got a bacterial infection that got into her blood stream. Friday morning the doctors came by and that was their gut feeling as well.

When there is an infection that attaches itself to the shunt tubing the only way to get rid of it is to take the shunt out, so Saturday afternoon the doctor made Raegan a reservation and she had her shunt taken out and an EVD put in. At the time of surgery we still didn't know what was wrong, so they cultured the shunt tubing, and Monday night we figured out what was wrong.

Raegan had Haemophilus Inflenzea which is a bacterial meningitis. Thankfully we caught it early enough that he had not caused meningitis. She has been on antibiotics since Saturday, and will have to be on them for 10 days. When the doctors came in the morning they told me that there had never been a case of a child with a shunt having their tonsils out getting the H Flu. Crazy to think that Raegan is the first case of this ever happening.

The goal is that tomorrow Raegan will get a PIC line, Monday she may have surgery to have the EVD taken out and the VP shunt put back in, and we want to be home by the 30th. Fingers crossed that things work according to plan!