Mensamom’s Musings

Wanted to take a minute and introduce you to our team:
*Dr. Yves Makhoul specializes in Pulmonology/Critical Care. He completed a 3-year Internal Medicine residency at Staten Island University Hospital (NY), a 1-year Critical Care Medicine fellowship at St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center (NY), and a 2-year Pulmonary Medicine and Critical Care fellowship at NYU-Langone Medical Center (NY).
*Dr. Ahsan Usman is certified in Internal Medicine, with a specialty in Nephrology. He completed his internship in Internal Medicine in the Cleveland Clinic Health System (OH), and a residency in Internal Medicine at USC, Los Angeles. He completed a Nephrology fellowship at Washington University/Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

These guys are the greatest!

It’s a great day day on 7! Good news all around! Brandon’s chest x-ray looks better, and his white count is down from yesterday, but his O2 in the last ABG is a little lower. Dr. Makhoul is not sure what to make of that, but seems generally pleased with the progress we are making. Brandon was able to communicate with us a bit more this morning. He would love to hear from the outside world, so if you want to post any comments or messages or send get well cards to either house, they will be very welcome.

Dr. Makhoul was up earlier. Still no positive results from any of Brandon’s tests, so they still are not certain of the cause behind all of this, but they are going to try treating with steroids. They had to rule out some of the bacterial, fungal and viral causes before they could do this, as the steroid could, in some cases, make things worse rather than better, but at this point, the steroids will either help or do nothing. So the waiting game continues. I am going to head home for the day, but will post again if we hear anything from the hospital. Look for more in-depth reporting in tomorrow’s issue . .

Well, the plot thickens. Dr. Makhoul was in a little while ago and had been in touch with Pathology about some of Brandon’s test results. So far, all the tests for all the common things have come back negative, so they are starting to dig a little deeper and check for some more exotic causes to this. So, as of right now, mycoplasma pneumonia may be out, since they have not been able to find any bacteria in any of the samples they took yesterday. That leaves ARDS of unknown origin, but they are not giving up on finding the culprit. Otherwise, things are staying remarkably the same. As we get more info, I will continue to post. Keep the prayers coming . . .

Breaking news! Brandon “woke up” enough to complain about being in CCU! He scribbled a note that looks something like “worst i can imagine”. Staff has him in restraints so that he doesn’t wake up & try to pull out the vent tube, and he has been very restless in the past hour, struggling against the restraints, so they are going to up his sedation just a bit to keep him comfortable and not panicky about what is going on. Dr. Makhoul said that the x-ray from this morning does not show any real improvement from yesterday, but it is not looking any worse, so Brandon is holding his own. Hopefully we will start getting some test results in the next few hours and will know more then. Stay tuned . . .