May 20th — Hospital Day 2

Eli woke up pretty grumpy today. Honestly, I don't blame him. We still don't have any results back on what's causing his fever and all he wants to do is go home. They continued drawing more blood for cultures throughout the morning.

About halfway through the day Eli said his head was itching. When we looked, we found liquid running down the back of his head from his incision. My heart sank. I'd been worried from the start that the fever might be coming from an infection, and now it wasn't looking good.

After getting it cleaned up, we met with neurosurgery and the rest of his care team. The plan is that when they put him under to place his PICC line and get an MRI, they're going to aspirate from the site and send it for a culture. Depending on what that shows, they may have to go back in surgically to open it up and clean out any infection. I'm praying it doesn't come to that.

Later in the day it started leaking again. They tried to get a bandage to stay on but couldn't get anything to hold with his hair, and Eli wasn't having it — he wouldn't let them work on it long enough to figure something out. After they left I was able to get it bandaged up well enough to keep it contained and keep him comfortable. Around 10:30 PM they came back in to swab it for testing and I redressed it. The bandage was pretty saturated by that point.

I'd be lying if I said today wasn't a scary one. But we're still here, still by his side, and still fighting.

Thank you for continuing to pray for our boy. Please keep them coming.

💛 #RoaringForEli