Kenny, Again
So.
Mom called this morning to say that Kenny was smiling and vocalizing and laughing and had finally had some food through his stomach tube and didn't seem prone to puking it up.
Apparently the day nurse at the hospital sucked rocks through a straw.
They are home again now, and Mom has help for the weekend. She says she simply won't take him back in to the hospital unless it's an absolute emergency--the quality of care he has received has just been too poor. They still don't know what's wrong with him, and frankly, nobody has yet really tried very hard to figure it out. He puked again this evening, and he has it coming out the other end too. His oxygen levels are fairly normal again, at least, and no fever right now. They left his port tapped so Mom can give him more fluids through that as needed. (A port is a little thing implanted in his chest wall that serves the same function as an IV, only it's WAY easier to keep a line in because you're not going directly into a vein. Instead the port has a little rubber button, which can be punctured through the skin with a needle, and a well, which dumps things like fluids and antibiotics directly into his blood stream. Doesn't get infected or occluded like an IV can, doesn't collapse any veins, and though one has to go through sterile procedure to tap it, we can leave it tapped pretty much indefinitely. It rocks.)
Mom said: "We're not back at Square One...but we're not where we were this morning either."
I'd say they are about at Square One and a Half. Maybe Square Two. I don't know how many squares there are before we get back to a well, healthy Kenny.
I am sad my mom isn't able to be here this weekend. I'll get over it, but I feel cheated.
formlesspassion asked what she could do for me in terms of support and really, I don't need much. I'm incredibly frustrated by how helpless I feel--I'd just fly out, but I can really probably only do that once in a semester and so I'm saving it for some sort of hypothetical More Dire Emergency, which I am trusting Mom to let me know about when and if it occurs. (She and I have a very strict agreement about this, so I'm not at all worried that she wouldn't tell me or something.) There isn't a community for my family in Fort Collins they way I have a community here that can be marshalled appropriately at times like this. Just having people know so that they can be generally clueful, ask about Kenny when they see me, and send both real and virtual hugs helps. And all the good thoughts and wishes and prayers--those mean a lot too.
And now I am going to go curl up on my boy and watch me some "Black Adder" before sleep. Thinking/writing about this gets me all tense.
Thanks, everyone.
Mom called this morning to say that Kenny was smiling and vocalizing and laughing and had finally had some food through his stomach tube and didn't seem prone to puking it up.
Apparently the day nurse at the hospital sucked rocks through a straw.
They are home again now, and Mom has help for the weekend. She says she simply won't take him back in to the hospital unless it's an absolute emergency--the quality of care he has received has just been too poor. They still don't know what's wrong with him, and frankly, nobody has yet really tried very hard to figure it out. He puked again this evening, and he has it coming out the other end too. His oxygen levels are fairly normal again, at least, and no fever right now. They left his port tapped so Mom can give him more fluids through that as needed. (A port is a little thing implanted in his chest wall that serves the same function as an IV, only it's WAY easier to keep a line in because you're not going directly into a vein. Instead the port has a little rubber button, which can be punctured through the skin with a needle, and a well, which dumps things like fluids and antibiotics directly into his blood stream. Doesn't get infected or occluded like an IV can, doesn't collapse any veins, and though one has to go through sterile procedure to tap it, we can leave it tapped pretty much indefinitely. It rocks.)
Mom said: "We're not back at Square One...but we're not where we were this morning either."
I'd say they are about at Square One and a Half. Maybe Square Two. I don't know how many squares there are before we get back to a well, healthy Kenny.
I am sad my mom isn't able to be here this weekend. I'll get over it, but I feel cheated.
formlesspassion asked what she could do for me in terms of support and really, I don't need much. I'm incredibly frustrated by how helpless I feel--I'd just fly out, but I can really probably only do that once in a semester and so I'm saving it for some sort of hypothetical More Dire Emergency, which I am trusting Mom to let me know about when and if it occurs. (She and I have a very strict agreement about this, so I'm not at all worried that she wouldn't tell me or something.) There isn't a community for my family in Fort Collins they way I have a community here that can be marshalled appropriately at times like this. Just having people know so that they can be generally clueful, ask about Kenny when they see me, and send both real and virtual hugs helps. And all the good thoughts and wishes and prayers--those mean a lot too.
And now I am going to go curl up on my boy and watch me some "Black Adder" before sleep. Thinking/writing about this gets me all tense.
Thanks, everyone.