A Little Hiccup

A little over a week ago, I brought Aidyn to the surgeon’s office to have the stitches removed that we’re still firmly in place around his broviac. The hefty, knotted end of the stitches was cutting into his skin and the skin started weeping. As a result, granulation tissue started growing around his line. Sounds like a repeat of last year. Anyway, the surgeon prescribed Aidyn Keflex since the site looked infected. He said to use it for two days and call back in three to four days to see if the wound culture sample he took grows anything out. So we started the meds a week from last Wednesday and that Friday. In the meantime, Aidyn started showing signs of bacterial overgrowth over the weekend resulting in a lot of stool volume and getting dehydrated. I had to use IV fluids for the first time in 19 days since being off TPN. Monday, I was instructed to continue using the antibiotic since the wound culture came back positive with some staph cocci gram positive bacteria growing on it. The site looks better now, but the tissue is still growing.

Aidyn really had a hard time since he was stooling so much and then getting lots of gas once we restarted the antibiotics. He lost his appetite for a couple days and he couldn’t take the Elecare full strength at first. I am sure it’s because he was dealing with bacteria die off from the Keflex killing off the overgrowth in his gut. He is back to normal now, but we will see what happens in the next few days since he had his last dose of antibiotics yesterday morning. With this experience, it shows us what we may have to deal with when Aidyn gets sick and looses fluid without a central line. We may just have to hospitalize him for fluids in the future.

Dehydrated and off track.

When we had our Boston visit last month, I asked the resident surgeon on staff that day if he could remove the stitches. At that time, Aidyn had layers of Iodine covering the exit site on the line. Stella, our respite nurse, and I had been slowly getting those layers of Iodine off the line each week during dressing changes using hydrogen peroxide. With doing so the ends of the stitches around the line were able to move more freely.

Taken 1/07/11, before the we dissolved the iodine and stitched came off.

Anyway, the resident surgeon did not feel comfortable removing the stitches, but he did shorten a couple ends. Looking back, I think if the stitches were removed when I requested it, Aidyn probably wouldn’t have had the granulation tissue growing. Here I thought removing the layers of iodine from the broviac site would make it better, but really, it made things worse. I just have to leave those thoughts alone now. There’s a reason it happened this way, I just don’t know yet. Hopefully it will not become a problem anymore and that we can wait until next month when we go back to Boston to deal with the line. Hopefully it will come out.

Back to himself.