Surgery Postponed

Roscoe's surgery has been postponed. When he started having problems on Friday, they sent off blood samples from each of his PICC lines to make sure they weren't compromised. Today, one line showed signs of infection so they removed it. The surgeon and head doctors agreed that surgery should not be done while Roscoe has an active infection, since the infection would compromise his stability. Thankfully, they identified that he had an infection before he went to the operating room.

"What? No surgery?"

The surgeon has requested that Roscoe have at least 72 hours of infection-free blood samples before commencing surgery to make sure that the infection has been eradicated. The good news is that the antibiotics that he is already receiving will combat any infection in his blood, as well as the infection in his lungs. In fact, the x-ray this morning showed his lungs in much better shape:

In the x-ray above you can see some other fun things. Coming from the left side of the image under his armpit, you can see a line that almost touches his heart (the white blob in the right side of his chest). That line is the PICC line in his right arm. Coming from the right side of the image under his armpit, you can see another PICC line (the compromised one that's now removed) which doesn't go all the way to his heart. Up at the top, you can see his trach tube clearly in his throat.

Roscoe had more frequent coughing today and they pulled out thicker mucus, but he was very stable as far as his heart rate and oxygenation goes. He is still up at 80% oxygen and 18ppm nitric oxide, so he's not back to the stability he was at on Friday morning before all of this began.

They took another blood sample tonight. If that sample comes back infection-free (ie: "negative") then the surgery wouldn't happen for another 72 hours. The earliest his surgery might occur would be Thursday morning, but that assumes there is space in the already busy surgical schedule. I personally don't think surgery will happen until Friday (7/25) or possibly next Monday morning (7/28). Stay tuned and we'll keep the updates coming.