Busy week

Well, we've been home from the hospital for a week now (seems longer- it's always busy trying to catch back up after being in the hospital!).


Last Sunday, we went to the pumpkin patch, Little man was having a rough sort of day- he enjoyed playing but was tiring easily. We suspected it was from not getting his TPN the night before. Big mommy and daddy mistake, part of being in the hospital for a week- no milk in the fridge for the other boys’ breakfast; and no tubing for his TPN administration. We hadn’t realized we were short! We had the TPN bags, but the wrong tubing was sent! It was a weekend, we didn’t expect that anyone would be able to get us the tubing we needed until Monday, so we upped his formula intake (of course) but we were unsure how that was going to work out for him.

By Monday morning, it was becoming more clear that something wasn’t working out for him- but now we had a few things in the differential. A water bottle on Friday, found to have “gunk” in the sip valve; missed TPN for 2 nights, a line that wouldn’t flush the antibiotics through and we had to “push” it through (potentially putting bacteria into his system- not enough for full sepsis but…), or was worse yet- was he reacting to something like his new brand of hemp protein powder. Ah, the fun times of FPIES guessing games. A delayed food allergy, you have to look at a minimum of a 24hr.window. It gets muddy sometimes!

He had labs drawn on Monday, and my concerns grew as his labs confirmed that something wasn’t right. I continued to watch him through the next day- I was concerned that he may be heading downhill. I contacted his doctors and decided to continue to watch him through the day, and get his Thursday labs done on Wednesday to help assess- and make a plan if needed.

Thankfully, by Wednesday he was showing improvements and his labs confirmed this. We still don’t know for sure what caused this, but just thankful it was short-lived and his body re-cooped quickly. Thursday and Friday, he began to be more and more himself. He is still getting IV antibiotics 2x/day (morning and night). This will continue until the 26th; and then we will get cultures to see if the long treatment of intense antibiotics has worked to rid his blood of the bacteria. Good signs are that he is looking good, acting well, and his line that had redness around it now does not. I pray this treatment has worked.

One other thing noticed in his lab work is that his hemoglobin, that was dropping last week, has started to climb up….for the first time on its own- the numbers are going UP! I’m puzzled by this, an am remembering some research I have done on “iron loving bacteria” and wondering if that was happening to him. Well, now he is on IV antibiotics and his hemoglobin is going up- on its own. Coincidental? Maybe. Maybe it is a silver lining amongst this sepsis cloud. Everything does happen for a reason, that I do know.

The next step is to start some probiotics. Antibiotics kill bacteria in the body- good and bad. It may be helpful if it is killing some negative bacteria that is iron-loving; but regardless, his body still needs the good bacteria. Probiotics are found to be helpful during antibiotic treatments. Maybe this is the time when we get ahead of his gut dysbiosis that we know has compromised his gut health and complicated his FPIES?