Monday(LaborDay) 9/07/09

So I totally missed waking up to get report from the night crew. It was report time and then when I did call, the nurse was in with wound care ..."could you call back in 20 minutes?"... Then we did stuff that needed to be done and I went to work in the pediatric ED. When I did finally talk to Mary, she said that Michael had a restful day and he was pretty calm. Chris and Karen, Bette and Aunt Edna surrounded him most of the day. He was more alert with periods of being fidgety...waving his arms and legs about. His night last night was good and stable. They were mostly getting ready for tomorrow's surgery.

He spiked a fever today but they think it might be due to his homo graft. The doctor wants to wait until surgery tomorrow before getting fancy with cultures. The white blood count is not elevated so they are giving him Tylenol for his fever. There are a couple of areas on his shoulders that look MRSA-ish so the doctor (Dr. Morris) changed the way they did dressings to see if that will improve it. There is a problem with Michael's left index finger and something about the tendon being exposed. There will be an external pin placed to keep the finger extended. One thing you have to be really careful about on the hand is contractures. If a digit is allowed to stay bent, it could potentially scar that way and never be able to function or extend and flex normally. So it sounds like Mike has had a busy and good day. What with dressing changes, repositioning, physical therapy, doctor visits, family visits, repositioning, oral care...and whatever more we forget, he had a full day.

Remember Mike tomorrow as he goes back to surgery to remove the homo grafts, replacing them with auto grafts... and finger thing, and whatever more grafting needs to happen (shoulders?) Thank you for your prayers.

More later,
and so we go
JaCee