MRSA

We got the unfortunate word today that the infection in KT's jaw bone is MRSA, meaning it is resistant to some pretty high-powered antibiotics.  This is disturbing, to say the least.  The Drs. want to quickly do root canals on two more teeth, so we're doing those tomorrow.  This will eliminate some of the potential harboring of infection.  Then, they'll probably go in and remove the dead bone material that didn't take from her previous surgeries, as that goop also harbors infection.

They put her on a second antibiotic today, Septra, to supplement the one that's going through her PIC line.  Septra is taken orally. 

We're doing a fast for her on this coming Sunday, to plead for the Lord's intervention to help her get past this infection.  It will take all our faith, and the best efforts of the best doctors around, to accomplish this.  KT is in good spirits.

I'm sending Pam to Michigan tomorrow for 2 weeks to help Cami with her new baby, which was due today.  It hasn't come yet, but this ensures she'll be there in time for the birth, and be able to help handle the other hooligans.  It will be good for her get away and be able to focus on something other than KT's medical issues for awhile.  If we end up doing the surgery next week, we may bring her home early. 

Thanks for your continued prayers!

- Glenn

Ertapenem

Pam, Katie & Lyndsey are home tonight.  The PIC line was installed today, but no surgery.  Evidently, there is some disagreement between the oral surgeon (Siddiqi) and the dental craniofacial surgeon (Yamashiro) as to whether to do surgery right away, or give the IV antibiotics a chance to work for awhile first.  So they'll be discussing things next week and come to an agreement as to which way to go.  They do, however, want ALL the upper teeth on the right side to get root canals. 

The antibiotic she's on through the PIC line is a new one (at least I've never heard of it), called ertapenem.  She'll have 100cc's once a day.  We need to check on how this affects kidneys.

Time for bed!  It's good to have everyone home for a bit.  Thanks for your prayers.

- Glenn

PIC

The infectious disease Dr. in Provo confirmed that KT has polymicrobial osteomyelitis in her jaw bone, which is very serious.  She will undergo surgery on Friday to clean off the bones, and to install a PIC line, through which she'll receive antibiotics for 6 months.

Pam is very pleased that the Dr. in Provo (I don't have his name yet) was able to evaluate her so thoroughly and come up with the needed plan, and that he had access to an oral surgeon experienced enough to tackle the issue without us having to go back to Cincinnati.

We pray this man will be guided by the Lord to do exactly what's needed, and to get the road to recovery started.  This has been SUCH a rough road, and poor KT has suffered so much!  Thank you all for your prayers and faith - I know she will yet beat this.

All our love,

- Glenn & Pam, Lyndsey & KT

Infection

Please continue to pray for KT.  Her facial infection persists, and she continues to be in pain.  We are at a loss.

Turning the Corner

It appears that KT has finally "turned the corner" in beating this face infection.  She still doesn't feel back to normal, but the significant pain has eased enough that she could make it all the way through Church yesterday to celebrate Easter.  At the end of it, she was ready to immediately head for home, though! 

Dr. Bethers was able to successfully do the root canal in her back molar, thus saving the only chewing surface she has on that right side.  We are VERY grateful to him!  There is still one more tooth that probably needs a root canal, which we will try to get done next week.  The blood tests did show that her kidney function was not normal, so they took her off the strong antibiotics to allow the kidneys to rebound.  She'll have more blood taken today to ensure they are bouncing back.

The hyperbaric dives seem to be helping too, so we're thankful for that.  We had to remove her from 2 of her classes (one of them JROTC), in order for her to be able to keep up, since she has these "dives" every single weekday.  But now she won't be quite so overwhelmed, since she's still also catching up from the 1st semester when she was in the hospital.  This has been a really tough year, academically, but I'm proud of how well she's done at keeping and catching up. 

She's done with driver's ed, so tomorrow is her actually driving test.  We're going out to practice parallel parking today.  : )

Thanks to all of you for your love, prayers, and gifts.  They have helped her keep up a good attitude.  We send our love.

- Glenn

Still, the pain lingers

We keep thinking we've turned the corner, and found a solution for the facial infection, but it keeps on keeping on.  The poor girl is suffering tremendously.  We finished another round of anitbiotics 36 hours ago, and it seems like the pain and swelling are returning more strongly, so we're trying to get that renewed today.

Friday, the decision had been made to pull her back top molar, assuming infection is lingering there.  However, we realized, that if they pull that tooth, she'll be missing her ONLY chewing surface!  Which would complicate things even further.  There is also the concern that pulling that tooth might bring too much bone with it, and she doesn't have any bone to spare.  It might even break her jaw, which would be terrible.

So, Monday, the decision was altered to first do a root canal on eye tooth #6, which is where the visible swelling seems to come from.  While he's in there, he's going to see what, if anything, he could do toward a root canal on the rear molar - even though he has told us before that there just isn't room to get in there to do a root canal.  (We're getting a 2nd opinion on that issue today from a different endodontist.)  The first guy's aide told us there was another procedure, which I can't recall the name of, where he could go in from the side, by drawing back a flap of gum to get at the diseased root from a more accessible angle.  But now we're getting word that he doesn't want to even attempt that.

So, if this root canal on the eye tooth doesn't resolve the infection, we're likely going to have to pull that tooth and hope for the best.  We have GOT to get rid of that infection!  Her entire body hurts (which is another mystery to the Drs.  They've checked her blood several times and it doesn't show any sepsis, but something is spreading through her body). 

Her school work is suffering big time due to all this, and that's while she's trying to still catch up in English and Math from the 1st semester, which she got a way late start on.  Needless to say, we're all feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment. 

We send our love, and ask for your continued prayers.

- Glenn

Diving

KT is going in just now for her 3rd of 40 scheduled hyperbaric chamber "dives."  The intent is to force oxygen into her cells via one and a half atmospheres (we live under one atomosphere), to promote healing.  I had this same thing done to help save my leg 4 years ago.  It is a painless procedure; each dive takes 2 hours.  We think we're seeing results already, but can't be sure yet.  She is still in a lot of pain.

We think another tooth needs a root canal, and are trying to convince the endodontist to start that process.  We've also been in touch with Dr. Gordon in Cincinnati, and may have to rush back to Ohio to have him open her up and clean out the infected area.

Please continue your prayers for this suffering little girl!

Love,

- Glenn

Pain

KT is in much pain tonight.  Antibiotics are finished and swelling increasing again.  Prayers, please.

Last Week

Dear Family,

This has been such a stressful week, I have not taken time to update you all on what has been happening to Katie. Sunday we took her into the ER for a facial infection, I think I wrote about that. By Monday, the ER doctor decided to take her off the IV antibiotics and put her on oral ones. That afternoon I got a call from Dr. Gordon, (Her Craniofacial Doctor in Cincinnati). He told me that the infection very likely was caused by the teeth, because he had cut the roots off when doing the Lefort procedure to distract the upper jaw/face. So it just happened that we were very near to her orthodontist’s office, Dr. Prince. So we stopped. All he had to do was pull up her lip and he found an abscess on the right upper side of her mouth. He worked out the puss and sent us to an oral surgeon in the same complex, just down the sidewalk. Dr. Bullock took a panorex and then a 3D picture of her jaw area and found two places where there was infection. He then told us to set up an appointment with an Endodontist, Dr. Starr and to return to the ER and get another CT scan, which would show the abscess areas better this time because the cellulitis, infection, had started to form the puss pockets. So we returned and they spent an hour finding another IV, which was sheer torture on Katie, but finally they found a vein. The CT scan showed the same thing the 3D picture showed. So she started once again with IV antibiotic infusions. She had two infusions morning and night on Tuesday, as well as seeing Dr. Needham, whom we were directed, on Sunday, to make an appointment. Ultimately, we saw so many doctors, yesterday, her pediatric dentist, who confirmed that it was Dr. Starr whom we should be consulting. By the time we saw Dr. Christensen, he knew all about Katie and had conferred with Dr. Bullock about her. There must me a great talking network among the doctors here, we also got a call from her general Pediatric doctor yesterday. Anyway, to shorten this long story, we saw Dr. Starr, the only board certified endodontist in St. George, yesterday. He did a root canal on a tooth, third from the right center, cleaned out puss and debri and put a temporary cap on the tooth. The molar top back right, looks also to be infected, we go in today at 12 noon to see if he can do anything with that one. It is a big problem because she cannot open her mouth enough for the doctor to get a tool into her mouth to drill a hole in it and clean it out. Please pray that the Lord will teach him how to clean the tooth out and relieve the infection. He may have to pull the tooth, but even that poses problems because once again, there is no room to pull it out, the back molars, upper and lower, touch when her mouth is open. I know the Lord can help us and I’m praying for the kind of help the apostle that is a heart doctor had with guidance when he worked on a patient with an enlarged heart and was prompted with every step what to do to accomplish what was needed. I know he can do the same thing for Katie. The Lord will yet Help Katie to have a more normal existence!

We are still planning to go up to Logan on Friday and go through the Logan Temple with Lyndsey on Saturday at 1pm. Looking forward to it and especially seeing Lyndsey and giving her a congratulations hug on getting her mission call.

We send our love and gratitude. Love, Pam/MOM/Grandma

ER, Again!

We found an open abscess in KT's mouth tonight, so the oral surgeon wanted us to go BACK to the ER to see what was going on. We just got home.  They did another CT scan.  It seems the infection was just being drawn to a point so it could be eliminated from the body, but what had us worried is that KT's neck on the right side was hurting, and her shoulder.  Turns out that is probably the lymph nodes doing their job of fighting the infection.  It took them 45 minutes to get the IV in tonight, poking her 7 times - needless to say, KT was VERY distraught, as she hates that! 

In the end, all's going as well as can be expected. She's completely exhausted, and she couldn't eat until 1030 tonight, so she was starving.  This is the last week of school before Spring Break, so she's trying really hard to keep going to school to finish strong, but it's hard.  She has to be back at the hospital tomorrow morning at 7:30 for another IV infusion of antibiotics, so she'll get too little sleep tonight.

Thanks for your prayers.  She has a nurse to watch over her tonight, so that's good. Pam's exhausted from Sunday's activities, and though I tried to get her to go home earlier tonight, she didn't, and now she's going to be in bad shape in the morning too.

Love you all!

- Glenn

P.S. Next weekend, JROTC has a PhysicalTraining (PT) competition in Las Vegas, and we selected the top 6 females and top 6males from our 220 cadets to compete. Guess what? KT made it into the top 6 females in our try-outs! However, she can't go because of this sickness, plus we'll be in Logan for Lyndsey's Temple event. But I was really proud of her -I wasn't involved in  at all, and she won it fair and square. Not bad for a little gal who breathes thru a trach!