Day 7

Life is in limbo at the moment. There are some small changes, but not much. This is life in 5C, we just wait patiently, and celebrate small wins.

Shane is able to talk some more this afternoon. Its so nice to hear his voice! He's had raging temps all day again today. He was around 40 today and stayed there most of the day. But his afternoon dose of panadol has sorted him out and he's dropped back down again. He'll probably start to creep it up again just before I go home.

Temperatures are very unpleasant for Shane. Often he has rigors which is a shivering designed to warm the body up. He lies underneath three blankets and can't get warm. This is the body's defence mechanism designed to kill bugs. Many bugs die in hotter environments, and when your immune system is negligible, its the only form of self defence your body has left. The problem is its not very effective under these conditions.

So far, not many of the cultures have actually grown anything. There was potential a bug in two out of three of Shane's lumen in his hickman line (he has three tubes (lumen) attached to his line that allows for more fluids and medications to go through). They treat this by doing Ethanol Locks. So they stop the fluids going through, and push about 2mL of ethanol into the lumen. It then sits in there for 4hrs sterilising the lumen. They will repeat this process every day for 5 days. It is worthwhile protecting Shane's Hickman line as long as possible. This basically his lifeline. As he is no longer eating or drinking, he requires nutrition and fluids to go through this line not to mention life saving medications. Without this line, he could risk worse infection or bleeding by trying to insert other types of lines into veins etc.

White, blue and red are the colours for the three lumen. Each colour is designed for different purposes most of the time. For example, the red one is often the one bloods are taken from. 

With such low platelets Shane is at risk of bleeding. Platelets are your clotting cells designed to create a wall of tissue to prevent further bleeding from happening. Red blood cells are the cells responsible for carrying oxygen - essential for cell function and energy production. When these are low Shane gets red spots on his skin that looks a little like a rash. This is usually worse around his legs.

I think the next few days are going to be much of the same. Just playing the waiting game. If these temperatures persist, they will probably do some more investigations.

Might be a wet few days also!

Sweet dreams xx