I have some good news! My J tube is making huge strides in the right direction! The blister-like redness around the tube is 98% healed and my constant, agonizing pain has disappeared! I woke up this morning with hardly any J tube pain whatsoever and have just had little bouts of pain throughout the day instead of nearly constant misery. The pain is a little more prevalent when doing my formula but not much worse. Now that the infection is clearing up I want to quit the antibiotics! It’s just hard when the tube is doing so much better, to take meds that make me feel a bit crummy. But I just keep having to tell myself that in my situation with antibiotic resistance issues I certainly don’t want to trigger that worse by not finishing out the round (plus the infection would return because it’s not 100% gone).
Two things you can pray about... I’m going to soon, Lord willing, be trying an iron supplement due to my severe iron deficiency anemia and also a probiotic to hopefully help me fight off infections better. Just please pray that 1.) I can tolerate them without a reaction and 2.) they will be successful in what they need to accomplish!
Anyways, I just wanted to let y’all know that things are improving!
“Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” {Isaiah 41:10}
Hi Friends!
My J tube has continued to worsen since my last update. More painful, lots of drainage (both bright teal green and an odd brown/milky color), and my skin around the tube has turned dark red and almost looks blistered. I started the antibiotic on Wednesday with no improvements whatsoever. I got some unexpected news from my infectious disease (ID) doctor this morning...not so good news. The results from the J tube culture came back. I have 2 different types of bacterial infection - gram positive Staphylococcus and gram negative Pseudomonas. Both of which are now resistant to the antibiotic they had started me on. Thankfully, the previous antibiotic that the pseudomonas had become resistant to a while back is now showing that the pseudomonas is susceptible again SO she switched me back to the antibiotic we used in the past and then added another antibiotic for the staph. She wasn’t surprised that nothing was improving since the antibiotic I was on was useless to kill off the infection. She got the orders into the pharmacy fast and the pharmacy delivered it to me in time to get 2 doses in today!
My ID doctor wanted me to contact my surgeon just to inform him of what is going on and the possibility of needing something done (like a tube change) in the near future if this infection persists or if this tube starts having back to back infections like the previous tube. She said we are getting close to being at a scary point and it may become necessary to put me inpatient, if I end up with back to back infections causing resistance to all of the antibiotics, to try to desensitize me to different antibiotics so we would have more options but that’s a touchy, dangerous thing due to all of my extreme allergies. Just please pray that these antibiotics would kill off this infection for good! I have been dealing with these infections for over a year now and the more they come back, the more dangerous they are and harder to get rid of. Also please pray that the pain will begin to subside soon as it has become rather severe.
Lord willing, I will soon be trying a probiotic to see if I can tolerate it and if maybe it’ll help me fight off all of these frequent infections. At least it’ll replace some of the good stuff all of these antibiotics are killing off, but we are hopeful that this may give my body a little extra fight. Please make this a matter of prayer as well!
Thank you so very much for your faithfulness to pray and encourage me! I really appreciate it!
