Day 16: April 22, 2012

Day 16                                                                                                    Written Apr 22, 2012 8:15pm

Dallas had a very restless night. He began hallucinating, was very shaky (to the point where he couldn't control it), and many times you could ask him what was wrong and he would say "I don't know". We believe he is going through withdraw from some of his other medications, but every time we ask anyone, it is almost like they are denying his dependency.

Dallas was very shaky this morning, trembling uncontrollably. We (Travis, myself, and his nanna, Donna) assisted with the dressing change. Dallas didn't receive any pain medicines prior to beginning his dressing change, but about halfway through, he was in quite a bit of pain, so he was given his Versed and Fentanyl. He immediately calmed down to where we could finish.

His shaking and trembling stopped for a few hours, then around the time the Versed and Fentanyl would have worn off, he began to get shaky. It's pretty apparent that these are the medications he has created a dependency to.

During the few hours when he was relaxed, we were able to get him to move around in bed (lift his legs, his arms, stretch, etc). Once the medications wore off, it was back to being shaky and where he just didn't want to do anything.

They did cultures on the infection that he has in his arm. The blood cultures they took a couple days ago aren't growing anything, but the culture they took from the infection site shows that he has a Staph infection. It seems to be one thing after another.

This infection is going to hinder his grafting surgery, as they have decided to postpone it until a later date. Monday, he will still be going in the operating room, but they will not graft. Instead, they will remove the cadaver skin, look at the areas to see how they are healing and if they need to be cleaned up at all, and replace the cadaver skin with a new one (on the face). They will also be cleaning the rest of his body really well and checking to see how things are progressing. Hopefully, there will be a lot more NEW healed areas so that his grafting surgery will be less when the time comes.

The night shift attending doctor came in and assessed Dallas. She felt that he was going through withdraw, and after assessment, they decided to put him on medications to slowly wean him off. It is so frustrating to see that your child has become addicted to a medication. The doctors have told us it could take weeks to get him completely non-dependent on the medication. So something he was given for a matter of days requires weeks of weaning. It's awful that he has to go through this, on top of everything else he is going through.

They have also sent of urine samples, as it appears that he is developing a urinary tract infection. I pray that he doesn't, the last thing he needs is another infection in his body. The only positive with that situation is that he is already on antibiotics, so if he does have one, the antibiotics he's already on should clear it up.

We are hoping that he will have a more restful night prior to surgery.