Pneumonia, again…x5
We have no answers, just theories - on why Jack continues to get sick…
This trip was our 5th pneumonia in less than a year.
All requiring us to get meds & oxygen from the hospital. After the last stay in August, we have oxygen at home that we can give him. We feel fortunate that they’ve trusted us to manage this, but sad that we continue to have to connect him to a tube.
What we know:
Jack has severe obstructive apnea. Follow up appt with ENT is end of October - likely scheduling the adenoid and tonsil removal once and for all.
Jack has a paralyzed vocal chord. We’ve been told it’s function could come back or his body with compensate for it…nothing much we can do about that right now.
One theory is that due to his vocal chord issues, he has trouble with secretions. Fluid might be silently aspirating into his lungs. He is on a thickened liquid diet though, so in theory, the amount of liquid that could be passed to his lungs should remedy itself. It is not…
Second theory. They believe that maybe, just maybe, due to Jack’s apnea, he isn’t getting full breaths into his lungs. Without the full breaths, there isn’t enough pressure to open his lungs completely which could create pockets of fluid that sit & get infected.
A third theory, is that Jack’s chemo medications limit the rapid growth of cells. Maybe this is causing his immune system to not operate fully, making him more susceptible to sickness/germs?
Next steps:
BiPaP machine will be here on October 4th & we will hope that sleeping with the machine will encourage his lungs to open up due to the pressurized oxygen delivery.
Maybe when his adenoids and tonsils are removed - we will have less apnea, and more oxygen going through his respiratory system.
We continue on…
