Friday, March 6, 2015

Infections

During medical school we did a lot of case based learning.  For infectious disease the typical student would immediately jump to the idea of drawing blood cultures to identify the bacteria and find out which antibiotic is effective, and please have that result in 15 minutes, thank you very much.  In the imaginary world of case based learning, we would be forced to wait for those results usually about two days before we would get the results, and then the case would practically be over.  The two day wait for results is pretty realistic.  It has almost been 48 hours since we came into the hospital and we are still waiting for the final information on this bug we are treating.

The day has been pretty unremarkable.  J has some mouth sores, but doesn't like the mouthwash.  He hasn't eaten much, but he did manage to have a protein drink.  He's pretty tired.  Not only is he more anemic than the day before, but they woke him up every two hours last night to take blood pressure measurements.  So hard to get rest in the hospital.   He still has no white blood cells.  Just waiting for his blood counts to turn the corner and start rising again.

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