9/21/2007 Update

September 25th, 2007 by shahin

I’m sorry about not sending an update yesterday.  By the time we talked to one of the key doctors it was very late at night.  I know a lot of you got worried. Shahin has been off of his paralysis and sedation medication for over 24 hours but he is still asleep.  Because his kidneys are not functioning yet, it takes a while for the medication to leave his body.  He has moved his head a few times and last night he opened his eyes briefly but he went right back to sleep. 

His white blood cell count is now in the mid 60,000 range.  Not a good thing as it is indicating that the infection is getting worse.  The good news is that they are fairly confident that they have found the source of the infection. There was a bit of misinformation due to one of the family members not understanding one of the doctors clearly and communicating erroneous data to the rest of us.  There is not an 8 inch section of the intestine that is going dead or is highly infected.  In fact the whole upper intestine is swollen and thickening.  Clear sign of CDIFF at work.  The doctors believe that the antibiotics being administered through enemas is not reaching far enough into the intestine, as the lower intestine is just fine.  They do administer the same medication through his nose tube into his stomach, but because of the swelling of the intestine at the point it connects to the stomach, it is not making it into the upper intestine. 

After several consults with some of the best specialists in this city, it’s been decided to insert a tube through his nose, into his stomach and then into the upper intestine and administer the medication directly to the source of infection.  This is a very risky and uncommon procedure.  If they puncture the intestine during the procedure, two very undesirable scenarios can happen.  One, the intestine will not heal because of the infection; and two, the CDIFF will leak into his abdominal area and there will be no way to control it at that point.  But since the procedure is being done by one of the best doctors around, our confidence levels are very very high.  The other good news is that they don’t have to move him (as originally anticipated) to do the procedure.  Moving Shahin is very high-risk. The procedure is scheduled to take place at around 3:00pm Central time.  Once we are passed placing the tube in place, we will be back to the wait-and-see mode to see how fast the medication will kill off the CDIFF and get the intestine back to normal.  The first indication of success will be the dropping of the white cell count.  

Because Shahin’s vitals are still holding steady (beside the white cell count) I’m still giving him a score of 3.  I’m very optimistic that he’ll be at a 4 or beyond by this time tomorrow. I’ll send another update tonight to let you know how the procedure went.  This could be that miracle we’ve been praying for.