Brandon had a bit of a rough day today. His grandma had surgery this morning, and so our entire extended family was at the hospital. As a result, Brandon had a lot of visitors and he seemed to get a little worn out. Tomorrow morning, the team is going to be replacing Brandon’s central line (the one up by his collar bone) with something called a PICC line. It goes into the arm near the elbow and gets threaded up the arm and into the main vein that returns blood to the heart. Once they are done with that, they will be replacing the radial artery line in his other arm . . . all in all, tomorrow is going to be a pain in more ways than one. I am really hoping that Brandon will be able to lay low, so to speak. The docs want to make sure that he is getting plenty of rest. The damage to his lungs will never be repaired, but with proper rehabilitation, his lungs will be able to compensate for the damage. In the meantime, it is going to be a long road to recovery. Please keep the prayers and messages of encouragement coming!
We have a diagnosis! Confirmed by pathology! ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) with an underlying cause of Acute Eosinophilic Pneumonia. The treatment is steroids & antibiotics, but he will probably have to stay on the ventilator for another several days. If everything goes well, hopefully, he will be home in time for New Year’s. In the meantime, keep the prayers coming, and any messages of encouragement will be passed along ASAP.
A link to the Wikipedia page about EP is here.
For anyone who would like to share a message with Brandon, OSF has an e-card option on their website. Here is the link. Just remember when you are filling out the patient information, he is registered here at the hospital as Christopher B. Forbis, room 4121.
Brandon update – Brandon has been moved over to OSF St. Francis, and he seems to be settled in pretty good in the Medical ICU unit. The docs there are going to be making some changes to his treatment protocol, but basically they are going to continue some of the meds and add in some others to try and knock out the pneumonia. He was awake for a bit tonight and we were able to talk to him a little, but for the most part the staff wants him to try and rest as much as possible, so we are still discouraging visitors, but I promise that as soon as he is up to receiving company I will let everyone know! My immediate impression is that this move is a good one and there is no where to go from here but up! I will be heading back up to the hospital tomorrow morning and will post again once I get a feel for where Brandon is at after getting some rest tonight. Thank you again for all your support and prayers!