January 15, 2026
Day 6:
Tomorrow is a big day. Triple threat surgery to remove her central line, do an transesophageal echo to get a better look at her heart and the biggie…..neurosurgery is going to completely take out the mass near her spine in her lower neck area.
They decided to remove the whole mass as if it’s infectious, they didn’t want to seed new infection and if it’s malignant, they also don’t want to spread cells. It’ll take about a week to get pathology back. The TEE results should be back tomorrow to tell us if Tate has vegetation or a big clot in the right atrium of her heart. A new line will be placed back next week sometime.
Tate’s second set of blood cultures grew and labs came back identifying the bacteria growing as the same as early Dec. IV antibiotics were changed today. This bacteria is a monster but so so slow growing. Sat cultures took 70 hours, Mondays took 48 hours to grow. She’ll need 3 negative cultures before a new line can be put back in.
The kids and Tim were here today and got Tate to the teen zone. We had a pizza party and it was nice to get some smiles out of Tate. Tomorrow she’ll be under for 4-6 hours scheduled to start around 11:30. Thanks for the ongoing prayers!