Update on sickies

I know we haven't updated (sorry Misti!!) Marissa is a lot better. No fever and more energy. She did need a little O2 for a couple of nights to keep her sats normal, but she hasn't needed it for the last couple of nights. She developed a little wheeze at the end of her cough, so we are treating her with a nebulizer and she is sounding much better. That's the good news.

The bad: The trach culture came back positive for a bacteria called pseudomonas. This bacteria is very common in trach kids and is very hard to treat. We think she is colonized with it because it is not what she is sick with right now. It can very easily turn into pneumonia, so it needs to be treated quickly if it is in its active state. Unfortunately Marissa's pseudomonas is sensitive to only two kinds of antibiotics. The first is IV administered over a period of 7 days. Obviously this would require hospitalization. It would be a shame for her to be hospitalized for the sole reason of giving her meds! The other kind is inhaled through a nebulizer. Problem with this one is it comes at a price of ... $4,000!!! Our insurance company said that it is above our price limit on our plan and for them to pay for it, they have to go through an override process which could take up to 48 hours!! Can everyone say catch 22?!?
Because this is something that is likely going to make her sick in the future, her doc is trying to get a pre-auth for this med so in the future we don't have to either hospitalize her or wait two days for the med. Aaaaggghhh!! Hopefully the insurance company will be reasonable (Oxymoron!?!) and realize that hospitalization for a week would be much more expensive than $4000 for 2 weeks of meds. We'll see!!!

On a different note Marissa likes to play the Yawnie game. I dare you to watch and not get sleepy!!