As I sit here at the hospital with Chris I think of all that has happened in the last 329 days. How did we get here? We came in for an infection on his brain and now he has a long list of issues going on. Although he has never asked “why me,” I have asked why him more often than I would like to admit. Why does bad things happen to good people? I guess this is one of the mysteries of life that will never be solved. A true unsolved mystery.
He still has the infection on his brain. In the past, when he had infections on his brain, they have took him to surgery and flushed his head out and replaced the hardware. However, this time they refused to do this due to his prealbumin being low and him not be able to heal properly. They want to do a total skin graph on his head when he goes in for the flush out and hardware change. This means they want to replace all the of his scalp with skin off of his back. This will be a long surgery so he needs to have his numbers up to under go it. Now his prealbumin is up where it needs to be, but his platelets are low. They have put him on a new drug to help bring his platelets up. They say it will take around four weeks to tell if it is really helping.
Below you will see a picture that shows the infection is still behind the hardware. I change his bandage everyday and flush as much as I can out with sterile flushes. The hardware prevents me from being able to flush very much out. One of the doctors suggested to take the hardware off and flush it out in to OR, but his neurosurgeon refuses to do anything with him until his numbers are where they should be.
Another minor issue came up today when I went to clean out his ears for him. I found a hard dried clump of blood. At least that’s what I think it is. They hospitalist thinks it’s just old wax. I have never seen black wax before. I guess it’s not impossible but I think it’s highly unlikely. I tried to take a picture of it but it doesn’t show very well. You can see the there is black stuff in there and it’s not just a black hole.
Sorry the picture is not the best but have you ever tried to take a picture of the inside to the ear canal? They ordered some ear drops to help break it up so time will tell if it is blood or wax. This will take a few days.
In the mean time I am hoping a praying nothing else goes wrong.
Thank you for all your prayers and well wishes. Please keep them coming.