No surgery?!?!?!

Her CRP is down from 8.4 yesterday to 7.2 today.  So yes, it is improving...but they would still expect it to be cut in half each day.

Neurosurgery has still not come by today.

Her primary team of Dr.'s taking care of her (the hospitalists) came and said that neurosugery is dragging their feet.  They are not sure they even want to go in and do surgery.  I do not know what their thinking is.

The hospitalists think they should do surgery and I think they should do surgery.  She has been on strong antibioitics for almost 1 week now, she is not improving like they think she should.    Her CRP is not being cut in half each day.  She is still having pain and fevers.  She needs additional intervention.  Even if they don't want to pull out the baclofen pump and tubing, then pull out her VNS so that we can actually do an MRI to get better information to prove to you that she needs surgery.

The orthopedic surgeons say they won't be able to get to the suspicious area on her spine from the incision that the neurosurgeons make (if the neurosurgeons decide to do surgery).  So they are kind of dragging their feet too.

I am really surprised that Infectious Disease isn't adamant about pulling out the baclofen pump tubing and pump.  They are leaving it up to neurosurgery.  Weird.

The hospitalists say that they are trying to arrange for neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery to sit down together and come up with a plan.  Yeah well...there is this concept floating out there called a "medical home".  It is supposed to be just that...all of your specialists sitting down together (or at least conference calling) and discussing the patient and coming up with the best plan.  IT JUST DOESN'T HAPPEN!  It is a great plan in theory...but that's all it is...a theory.

I am sure in this case they will be able to sit down and work something out, but it's not going to happen fast.  So they shouldn't have pulled Ellie off of her food to prep her for surgery if they didn't actually have a plan.

FRUSTRATING!