The PICC Line

I know I have eluded to Ryan's sickness in a couple of my posts and at last the story is ready to be told (or more like I actually have more than 20 minutes to sit and write about it).  It's a bit of a long one so bear with me.

Allow me to go back to where it all started.  Ryan went on a back country fishing trip with his friends in the middle of July.  The trip was documented in the following video clip thanks to Mr. Ryan Kearney http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qawp1zPqEo.  Before Ryan left on the trip I bought him some new Keens.  This turned out to be a bad idea as they hiked quite a bit and the new shoes gave him blisters all over his feet.

Fast forward to a week later when we are in San Francisco for the JT/Jay-Z concert.  The blisters on Ryan's feet still hadn't healed all the way and his feet were swollen the entire weekend.  We were able to alleviate some of the swelling with some Advil so we didn't think anything of it.

Fast forward to the next weekend when we were at the Natatorium with the kids.  Ryan was taking Isla down the water slide and he ended up jamming his foot at the bottom of the slide which hurt his back.  That night he became immobile due to his back injury and also came down with a fever.  We weren't really concerned as we thought Ryan had caught some virus from the kids.  When the fever didn't go away later that week and with his back still hurting he went to the doctor to see if they could help him out.  They gave him pain medication for his back and weren't really worried about the fever.

When the fever still hadn't gone away by the weekend Ryan went back into the doctor as it was starting to affect his sleeping (night sweats).  They drew some blood and definitely said something was wrong, but they weren't sure.  Again they told him to just take some Advil and hoped that the fever would go away.

Thankfully by the time we left for our trip to Montana the fever had gone away and Ryan's back was doing better.  Unfortunately that was short lived as Ryan sat in a chair wrong when we were on the pontoon boat and his back started hurting again.  That evening the fever also came back.  This is when we knew something had to be wrong and the back pain and fevers were related.

Ryan had an appointment with his doctor on the Tuesday after we got back from Montana (the previous doctor visits had been with other doctors within the same clinic) and he sensed Ryan's irritation with the fever and back pain so he started the ball rolling immediately.  That same afternoon he sent Ryan to get an MRI. The results of the MRI showed a large abscess in Ryan's lower back.  That evening they sent him to the hospital to see an infectious disease doctor that stuck an 8 gauge needle into his back so they could get a biopsy of the abscess (I should have put a disclaimer on this post that I am an accountant and have no idea if I am using the correct medical terms, but they sound right).

By this point the doctors had concluded that the abscess was either a staph infection or strep that Ryan had most likely contracted on the fishing trip through the blisters on his feet, hence the swelling.  The plan was to treat the infection aggressively with a lot of antibiotics.  In order to do this they needed to insert a PICC line into his arm so I could give him the antibiotics everyday.

I get queasy with this kind of stuff, but "in sickness and in health" right?  I sucked it up and every night I gave Ryan his antibiotics:

The doctor's later learned that Ryan had strep and not a staph infection.  He was actually lucky that he tore a muscle in his back as the bacteria attached on to it and created an abscess.  If that wouldn't have happened the strep would have lived in his body without us knowing and could have reached his heart which would have put him at a high risk of a heart attack.

I am happy to say that the antibiotics started to work immediately and the abscess shrunk to a smaller size that allowed Ryan to have the PICC line removed after two weeks.  He still has to take oral antibiotics for a month, but I think he would rather do that than have the PICC line.

It was a rough month there, but I'm happy that Ryan is healthy once again.  I don't think I will ever take my family's health for granted again.