The Dr.

The Dr. came out and talked to me and told me what took so long.

The anesthesiologist thought her breath sounds sounded asymmetrical (1 lung sounded better than the other), so he wanted to get a chest x-ray before starting. The x-ray was fine...but took extra time.

Dr. Klatt's part only took 45 minutes as anticipated.

They are still working on the PICC line.

He said that it is WAS infected to the hardware---yuck---I did not want to hear that. But he also said that it wasn't infected the whole way along the hardware. He said that is unusual. Once it gets tot he hardware it usually spreads the full length. He thinks what happened is that it started out as a surface infection and by the time it spread to the hardware most of the healing by the hardware was done, so it couldn't spread any more.

He said that she is only the 4th case he has seen like this. He said that the infectious disease people will be really gung ho to remove the hardware and to remove her baclofen pump (because the tubing is there and they will say that it has been infected. He says of the 3 cases like hers that they did not have to remove the hardware and they did not have to remove the baclofen pump and they are more than a year out now. He said if you can make it a year out, then your gold.

I said, what if worse comes to worse and we have to remove the hardware...is it possible and what happens? He said yes, it is possible. He said what they do is keep her on antibiotics to keep the infection at bay until the bone can heal sufficiently to be strong on it's own. Then they remove the rods and do not put them back in.

He is pretty sure that since the infection went all the way to the hardware that the ID (Infectious Disease) people will want her on IV antibiotics for 6 weeks and maybe even oral antibiotics after that.

One of the unfortunate things is that 25% of the time the cultures don't grow anything because she has already been on antibiotics. So they really aren't sure which antibiotic to put her on. They just have to guess and play the odds. We'll just have to see.