Monday, August 20, 2012

Day +135

Jacob definitely has pneumatosis.  It was identified in two different areas in his intestines.  He has been on gut rest since Thursday night.  He will have an xray on Wednesday to check it again.  If it's starting to look better, he might be able to start eating again.

Another issue is that Jacob's counts have all been trending down lately.  He has continued to need nuepogen in the hospital to have a safe wbc count and he needed a blood transfusion yesterday.  Things that could cause this are: graft failure, medication intolerance/toxicity, gvhd, or an infection.  Blood has already been sent off for an unsorted chimerism which should come back on Wednesday.  If a problem is detected in that result, further investigation of his graft would include another bone marrow aspiration.  That will give us some answers as far as his graft.  He also has further studies currently being processed to check for intolerance to his medication, namely tacrolimus.  He doesn't show any outward signs of gvhd, so when his pneumatosis is controlled enough for him to start eating again, if he has no signs of nausea, abdominal discomfort, or diarrhea, they will probably dismiss that theory.  If he does show any of those signs, however, then they want to proceed with a scope. So far he has come back negative on every type of infectious culture that they've done, so that is probably the least likely culprit.

Three of my Heroes


1 comment:

Lindsey said...

Thanks for the update Kylene. Sorry to hear that his counts have been going down and the pneumotosis. Hopefully they will figure it out soon. You guys are in our thoughts and prayers.