Intestinal Bug Causes Sickness

This past Saturday, Erika experienced feverish symptoms (vomiting, high temperature of 102.4+, body aches, etc.) and had to be admitted to the hospital. They ran blood cultures Sunday morning and the results came in early this Monday morning. Her blood has been infected with a G- (Gram-) bug. There is no specific name of this type, but it came from her intestinal line. The intestine has many different types of bugs to break down food, and at times, if these bug try to escape the intestine, white blood cells fight them off and keep them housed in the intestinal line. Erika's white counts have been at nothing for the past week due to her last dose of chemotherapy. So nothing could stop this infiltration of the bug from her intestine, causing her to get a blood infection. This is an example of how our "normal flora" will cause sickness when our immune system is compromised. The hospital has been giving her three different types of I.V. antibiotics to destroy these G- bugs. Her red blood count dropped dramatically this morning so she is now getting two to three bags of red blood. Please keep donating blood to red cross and thank you all for donating to help save lives. She will be in the hospital until Wednesday or Thursday.

Bottles with solution for culturing. A total of 12 containers used for culturing.

Getting blood from her central line.

Preparing blood for culturing.