Lyra had been doing fine, gaining weight slowly and there was a good chance we would have been able to take her home within the week, but some things were discovered yesterday evening that has her back in the PICU, at least momentarily.
Yesterday started okay, Lyra was as awake as we've seen her in weeks and Maren even got a little giggle out of her. She had been smiling a lot more and becoming a little more interactive. I don't want to get into all the details, but she was still having one problem that we were getting more and more annoyed about (both in terms of the problem and the plans for correcting it), but since she showed no clinical symptoms of having any serious issues with this problem, the docs were moving forward with the feeding schedule. Later on, they saw some things on x-ray that they didn't like and the feedings were stopped. It was determined that Lyra has an intestinal infection, possibly something pretty serious. We're very hopeful that it was caught early enough that antibiotics and rest can get it resolved before it causes any additional problems.
Lyra went back into the PICU last night to get some lines put in so they can give her the antibiotics and other IV fluids. It looks like she won't be staying there for too long, and will probably be back in a step-down room either later today or sometime tomorrow. They're planning on giving her gut a rest for 10-14 days, so in all likelihood, we will not get to bring her home before her next surgery.
Posted by Tim at August 17, 2004 01:03 PM