Warranted events

After our last post, Eliza changed from having a high heart rate (200-215) to having an unusually low heart rate for her (140-160), while continuing to have intermittent bradies. It didn't worry the hospital team as much, but it worried us just as much if not more - her heart rate hasn't been consistently that low ever before, so what was going on? Also her blood pressure was reading unusually low (averaging 40 instead of 60)... weird and scary stuff.

However, as the evening went on, Eliza's condition improved markedly. Her temperature came back down to normal, her blood pressure came back up, her color improved and she became less lethargic. Her bradys decreased in frequency and stopped entirely by 1 AM. We were still worried about her condition but at least she wasn't acting as obviously ill, and we were able to get a few hours of sleep while we waited for the results of her blood culture and urine culture.

Today we got confirmation from the cultures that Eliza does in fact have an infection of some sort. All we know at this point though is that it's another gram negative rod bacteria (remember Klebsiella from way back when?). It's a good thing that they went ahead and started with the antibiotics last night! They've adjusted which antibiotics she's getting (now gentamicin and zosyn) to more specifically target this germ, and they've drawn some additional labs (a second blood culture and a spinal fluid culture) to check how the infection is progressing, but besides that, it's a waiting game.

At least today she hasn't been acting very sick - no bradies, eating fairly well, temperature and heart rate OK, blood pressure a bit high though - so maybe that means her little immune system is kicking germy butt. We're hoping so!