Superbug!

You'd think that we're already dealing with a lot, right? Well, when it rains, it really does pour... we received a test result for William that he tested positive for MRSA (Mercer). Which is a highly antibiotic resistant strain of bacteria. The hospital rarely has incidences of this, and of course William is one of the few to get it... thankfully, he's already on antibiotics for it, and the docs have pinpointed his antibiotics and paired them down since Saturday. William still has good vitals, although we haven't been able to reduce any more settings overnight really.
So, this MRSA situation is complicated for William because:
1) the infection could be living inside any of three possible different life support lines: His arterial line from which we draw blood, give fluids and meds and get blood pressure readings, his breathing tube, and another line which is important for some reason I can't remember right now. We can't remove any of these lines, so we have to wait until we get a clear blood culture, or until we can insert a fresh arterial line into William's arm.

2) Since William has the hole in his abdomen to drain the air that was surrounding his gut, he can't eat breastmilk. This means, he won't be able to grow as well. He also may experience stunted growth from the steroid he's on for his lungs. This may make it difficult for him to grow larger veins so that we could get another line.

3) MRSA could lead to some other serious diseases like pneumonia or Meningitis (I think). And one way they would have to confirm meningitis is by taking some spinal fluid and that would be probably too much stress for William to handle at this point.

4) We now have to scrub up before and after we approach William's incubator. Meaning, we have to wash and sterilize, put on gowns and gloves, before we can interact with him. Then to avoid spreading this thing some more, we have to wash up afterward, too.

William will now be isolated from the other babies, meaning he gets his nursery all to himself!
This is just one more piece of this difficult puzzle that is William's life so far... one infection wasn't enough, so let's make it two, and... how about we make it the big baddie that we really don't want a baby to get because it's hard to treat? 😕
Even though this is obviously a very serious development, and we're going to have another long week praying that the small infection and drainage site clears up well, we also can't deny that this is just a little ironic. Of course the littlest baby is going to turn into the most dangerous in the ISCU and of course, William is just going to deal with one more big thing...

We really really pray that he'll be able to cruise for a while without anything new popping up, so some of these things can resolve first. It's possible that he'll have to stay on the MRSA antibiotic for weeks, if it's in one of his important life lines. So we're hoping that the antibiotic will flush out the bacteria wherever it is, so that we can get a negative blood culture and so that William can heal without dealing with this.