A Rough Start

For starters, this post has pictures of Ethan's incision, so if you are squeamish, you may choose not to proceed.

Ethan has been enjoying being home but has had a little bit of a rough start. It started last night with a temperature of 101.9. He already had Motrin on board that I had given him an hour before for pain control. We called PCMC and talked with Bonnie (one of the Cardiothoracic Nurse Practitioners) and she had us given Ethan's Lortab (which has Tylenol in it) early to see if his temp would come down. Luckily it did and he has not had one since. I'm glad that it came down, but it bugs me to not know what was causing it in the first place. Anyway, Annie (another Cardiothoracic Nurse Practitioner) called us back this morning and wants us to come into the clinic tomorrow morning instead of next week to get some blood work done.

I've also been concerned about a pink raised area above his incision that I was told to keep an eye on to make sure that it didn't start oozing or looking like it might be infected. Well, I ended up calling Bonnie again tonight because this "spot" is definitely changing. It is getting larger, darker, and is now hard (where it was soft earlier). It could easily just be a large bruise that is finally showing through (since there are green edges it looks kind of old). However, it seems to be getting bigger and I am afraid that he might have a small bleed underneath. We were told that there was probably nothing that they would do about it, but they would look at it tomorrow in clinic. What do you think?



I took this picture last night around 10:00 pm. It was more pink than it shows here, but you get the idea.


This picture was taken today around 11:00 am. It is starting to have more color to it.

This picture was taken around 5:00 tonight.

And this picture was taken around 7:00 tonight. Although you can tell that it is obviously changing colors, it is hard to tell in these pictures how raised it is. The size looks as if you cut a golf ball in half and then painted it purple. We'll see what they say and/or do about it tomorrow morning.

---Allison