X-Ray Update....

Here's an interesting "story." I called Jaime's pulmonologist today to see if he wanted me to restart the steroids and put him on a taper down. I called because Jaime's lungs are still junky and he's still requiring more aerosols than I would like at this point. In calling I was asked what we were doing for the infiltrate. I said. "what infiltrate?" Apparently, Jaime has a right middle lobe infiltrate-that was the final read of his ER x-ray from last week. "An infiltrate is the filling of airspaces with fluid (pulmonary oedema), inflammatory exudates (white cells or pus, protein and immunological substances), or cells (malignant cells, red cells or haemorrhage) that fill a region of lung and increase the visual impression of increased soft tissue density." http://www.aic.cuhk.edu.hk/web8/Very%20BASIC%20CXR%20lungs.htm
This essentially means that Jaime has pneumonia. Now the biggest question is...is it bacterial pneumonia or is it aspiration pneumonia? Either could certainly be possible with Jaime. After telling the NP (nurse practitioner) that nothing was done for the infiltrate (as I was told his x-ray only showed streaking) she decided to put Jaime on a very strong, high dose antibiotic and to hold off on restarting the steroids for a few days. We're just trying to see if the antibiotics will help him before adding more steroids. We're due in for a follow up visit on Monday! In general, Jaime is OK...see....he and Jared are jumping around like silly boys!


He's great one minute and as I'm calling it "craps out" the next! I just want him well! I've had pneumonia a few times and it wiped me out, it was painful...I can not even begin to imagine the pain he must feel on a daily basis. And now to add pneumonia on top of chronic lung disease...man! I'm a bit frustrated that it's nearly a week later and I'm just learning of this news...and it was because I called THEM! Definitely a break down in communication! I do know that Jaime's pulmonologist is out of town and that the system was down that transferred x-rays from satellites to the main campus...but it's still disappointing.
Anyway, that's all I wanted to share today! Quite an update from yesterday...and yet it makes TOTAL sense!