PICU REUNION

I told Ben that we had a "FAMILY REUNION" this weekend and I think he misunderstood exactly what I meant. I was talking about MY family. He thought I was talking about his PICU family. We've been here since early this morning. I left our "Hutchins" reunion at 9pm last night after Ben spiked a fever of 102 along with increased work of breathing, needing oxygen, lots and lots of "ocular gyric movements"...sometimes they think these are seizures. I took drove 2 hours home to our local ER (only because I needed clothes from home) where we stayed for 4 hours. Finally he was transferred to Dartmouth and we arrived at 5am this morning. It was a LONG 24 hours to be awake. Needless to say...Mom was TIRED. Ben is resting comfortably now. His x-ray from the outlying hospital showed a total whiteout in his left lung, so they diagnosed him with pneumonia. The x-ray here showed a 50% improvement, mostly white on the lower half...that means it's most likely a collapse that improved with some time. He is still needing 40% oxygen, he was started on two antibiotics, one of them being "vancomyocin". He had a reaction to this drug called "red man syndrome" where your face and torso become really, really red...almost looks like you've been sunburned.

(See bottom picture)

Thanks goodness this isn't considered an "allergic" reaction as he is allergic to SO many antibiotics. They will just give him some benadryl before the med. and run it slower. Because of his possible increase in seizure activity (his eye movements), Dr. Filiano doubled his phenobarb dose and had the nurses give him a loading dose as well. He is looking really tired tonight after getting all that phenobarb.

(Ben after getting "red man syndrome")

So far no vent, that's good news. We'll see how he does through the night and into tomorrow. Maybe we'll get lucky and make this a short reunion. Until then...you can find me under the covers.