Phillip Wetherington

Phillip was born 3 months premature as one of a set of triplets. Phillip and Zachary are now 15 with their sister Jennifer as their guardian angel. Phillip was only 1lb 10oz at birth. He lived at Wolfsons’ NICU for 3 ½ months and we have seen many doctors for many years. Most recently, Phillip had scoliosis surgery which required two rods and 45 screws to be placed into his spine. The surgery went great and he could sit straight up which was amazing.

After that surgery, his back starting holding fluids, blood etc. which started leaking out once he returned home. On Friday, we meet Dr. Loveless at the ER at Wolfson Children’s Hospital and he drew that out. However, once anything leaks out it has the potential to get infected. The next day, Phillip had a temperature of 104 and was readmitted back into the hospital. Monday morning, Dr. Loveless said he would need to go back to surgery so he could re-open his wound.

At this time his blood cultures had not grown any infections. The only way to know what was causing the high temperature and treat any possible infection was to re-open the wound. When he re-opened the wound it was definitely infected and he cleaned the infection out. During the second surgery Dr. Loveless had Ms. Amy from the PICC team place a PICC line for him to receive long term IV antibiotics.

After that we started the healing processing all over, Dr. Loveless put the wound vac back on to help close the wound and removed any drainage from surgery. After the two drainage tubes were removed and the fever was gone. Dr. Modani from Infections Disease said we could come home and continue IV antibiotics for 30 days, and antibiotics by mouth for one year. Since they were not able to remove the hardware from his spine he will need to take antibiotics by mouth for one year to prevent the infections from reappearing.

We are thankful for the staff at Wolfson Children’s Hospital. The staff always treated us like our child was family to them. This care not only meant a lot to Philip, but helped our whole family be just a little more at ease. They shared stories with us, sympathized and even went as far as to bring in games, toys and even a comedian to keep Philip and other children in high spirits.

We are thankful to have a facility so close to us. If we did not, travel expenses, lack of support and overall stress could make this so much harder to handle. Not to mention harder for family to come visit. Thank you Wolfson Children’s Hospital.

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