Therapy update

Just a quick update, for those who want to know. We saw Patrick’s physical therapist this morning. I was hoping she’d be pleased by what she saw, and she was. This is good news. It means he doesn’t need a brace quite yet.

After a week of twice daily stretches, Patrick is beginning to put his right heel down when he walks. When he’s going slowly and deliberately, he can do it almost every time. When he tries to go fast, it’s back up onto his toe and he starts to trip and veer to the left.

The therapist says this means that it’s almost certainly a matter of tone. For whatever reason, the muscles in that foot are pulled tight. When he thinks and controls it, he’s able to get them to stretch into ways that allow him to walk. When he goes fast, he can’t control it and the foot is pulled up and in.

So for the forseeable future, we’ll keep doing exercises to stretch out the muscles so that he doesn’t have to fight as hard to control them. Kinda like how you stretch out a balloon before you blow into it. The more we stretch, the more flexible the muscles will be.

He still loves walking, though! All day long I wander around putting walking toys in positions so that he can find them and push them across the room. Last night, we went out for a walk around the sidewalks in front of our house. For the first time, I didn’t take a harness to hold on to and he tripped and fell a few times, but most of the time got up and kept walking. Now we’ll just hope he’ll keep trusting me.

And when he does start walking, I’ll probably be sorry that I pushed so hard for this. After all, right now I spend all my time following him around and putting things back that he pulled down or out. Walking just means he’ll be quicker in his path of destruction.

Walking . . . Well, almost

When I started Patrick in heavy duty physical therapy 3 months ago, he was crawling like a wounded soldier.. on his belly with one leg dragging. The goal we set then was for him to be able to stand and walk. Last week, it’s like the little lightbulb flicked on and he’s brave enough to be putting some serious effort into learning to walk.

It started when he found a toddler walker (the medical kind) in the physical therapy office. His therapist pulled it out so he could play with it. Before we knew it, he’d made a successful lap around the hallway in the clinic. When we got home, all he wanted to do was stand and walk around the furniture.

The next day, I weighed down his little cart from Ikea with 10 lbs of flour and away he went.. Walking the cart across the room with me holding onto him by his harness to keep him from falling. Before long, I decided the space was too small, so we went outside. He pushed his little Ikea cart with me holding onto him for balance all the way from my house to the school parking lot behind us.. We sat down and rested after a couple of laps in the parking lot. I thought he’d quit when he saw our house, but no.. he kept going 3 houses the other direction before sitting down to rest, then getting up and trying to take the cart back home. It was at least half an hour of walking and about half a block.

The next night, he saw his cart standing there again, climbed up and pushed it across the room all on his own. The first several tries he leaned too far into it and had to basically run to keep up, but with some practice, he was soon able to control his speed a bit.

He still has a ways to go. His little cart tends to veer to the left and Brian pointed out that he seemed not to be taking as good of steps with his right leg. He walks on his toe and kind of turns his foot inward to take a step.

I pointed this out to his physical therapist yesterday. We talked about some of the possible causes. (Effects of the cardiac arrest, sensory issues, or the scar tissue). I remembered kind of out of the blue being told that the deep wound caused by an IV infiltrating the vein in his ankle when he was a month old could cause problems with walking. (This kind of out-of-the-blue-but-makes-sense memory I sometimes think is the Lord pointing us in the right direction.) In the end, the therapist explained that knowing the cause doesn’t change the treatment.

She did some evaluation exercises and found that he has limited range of motion in the foot, leg and hip. Now I have exercises to do with him at least twice a day to help stretch the muscles. We hope that this will improve things, but if not, she may order a brace for him to wear while he’s learning to walk to help correct the position.

Knowing this as he first starts walking is a HUGE blessing! We can make a minor adjustment now that will help him down the road. This is exactly why I have him in so much therapy right now.. So that we catch these little things that are results of his illness while they’re easy to correct.

This was a good reminder to get this week as I added occupational and music therapy this week and am trying to decide if I proceed with a feeding therapist as well. As if I weren’t already busy. The occupational therapy has made a difference, though, after just one visit. See, we think Patrick might be “sensory seeking”. In other words, he craves big physical input. The therapist has taught me some techniques to use to fulfill that craving, leaving his brain and body free to focus on other things.. Like walking or looking at books or learning new ways to play with toys.

It’s a little thing, but I think I’ve seen improvements. He sat next to me on the bench in church on Sunday and just looked at a book for a good 15 minutes. This is remarkably unwiggly for him.

And so, we keep plugging along.. doing all we can to keep Patrick learning and growing now with every moment he feels well enough to do so. I’d really like him to be walking before his transplant. I think that if he’s not walking when he goes in, that it will take him a long time to get well and strong enough to get back to where he is now. So if we have to walk to the school and back every day to accomplish that goal, that’s what we’ll do. He doesn’t mind the walk, especially now that school’s out so he can walk to the playground and slide on the slide.

An evening to remember

It’s been two weeks since Patrick’s Hope Concert and I haven’t blogged about it yet because, well, how do you even try to capture something like that? It was something we’ll never EVER forget!

Friends, families and even strangers came together in amazing ways.

Brian met the sound crew and musicians at 1:00 p.m. I think he had a great time tagging along during sound checks.

Meanwhile, our wonderful friends and family worked to set up the silent auction.

It was after 5 when I got Patrick’s afternoon medical care taken care of and got back to the school where the concert was being held. What I found was amazing! All the auction donations displayed on tables looked so different than they have sitting in my basement. The community was so generous! There was far more there than I’d realized had been given.

The auditorium seemed to have been transformed. When we toured the school months ago it had seemed like a shabby school auditorium. Now, with instruments on the stage and Patrick’s image filling the wall, it looked like a concert hall.

Before long, volunteers and guests started arriving. Soon the lobby was shoulder to shoulder with people we love. Our adoption caseworker was there. So were some of Patrick’s favorite nurses. Co-workers. Friends from church. Family. His doctor. I wish there had been more time so we could have visited with all of you.

We decided to watch the concert from the balcony. (It wasn’t officially open).  We wanted Patrick to have lots of room.. and to watch the concert where it wouldn’t matter if the applause scared him or if he was too sleepy. This was a good thing because his only nap was 11 a.m. and the concert started just half an hour before bedtime.

We owe a huge thank you to Paul Cardall for all he did to put together an amazing concert! He had me crying from the start. The other musicians deserve a thank you, too.. For giving their time, talent, and even equipment to make the night work. So thank you Charley, Sam, Mindy, Steven, Marshall, Kevin.. and to the other musicians who I may not have met but who came and shared their time and talents.

It was so fun to see everyone in Patrick’s “Got Guts?” t-shirts! Just one more thing that made us realize that this night really was for our family!

A big thanks is also owed to Seth Mitchell who worked miracles in getting us a concert quality sound system, donated no less, and a crew of very talented engineers who mixed sound, ran lighting, and otherwise put together the look and feel of the concert. We couldn’t have done it without you!

While I’m expressing thanks..Thank you to my mom who put so much time and effort into pulling this event off! Neither one of us knew what we were doing, but you certainly stepped up and figured it out. Thanks to the rest of our friends and family. Dad, Dick, Phyllis, Jill, Cindy, Michelle, Jay and friends Kirstie and Tifanie who came to meeting after meeting and worked to pull everything together. Thanks to the many friends and family members who came to staff the event. Thanks for keeping me sane!

Thanks to the businesses and individuals who gave to the silent auction. I was touched with each donation that would show up. I wish there was space to put all the stories here.. as almost every item has a story behind it.

And finally.. thanks to all of you who came to share the evening with us! In that big auditorium, we looked few in number.. but there were several hundred of you there. The event definitely made a difference! We more than doubled the donations received thus far. I don’t dare publish a number, because my doorbell still is ringing with people giving more.

Beyond helping with Patrick’s transplant fund, though… You helped us a lot by heart, too! Knowing that there are so many of you who would give up a Saturday evening to come and celebrate Patrick’s life with us was means so much!

This has been a tremendous journey with Patrick. Each day with him is a miracle. I feel as though he’s outlived his expiration date time and again. It was wonderful to be able to take a night and celebrate that miracle with the people who mean the most to us.

Who needs sleep?

There’s a song by the Barenaked Ladies called “Who needs sleep?” Here’s a line from that song: “With all life has to offer, there’s so much to be enjoyed. But the pleasures of insomia are ones I can’t avoid.”

If you’ve been waiting for an update on the concert, I need to apologize. See, Patrick’s been having a hard time sleeping this week. It seems every few nights something goes wrong and wakes him up. First it was diaper rash. (When his prescription strength creams fail him, the result is massive skin breakdown that makes me want to cry just looking at it.) Then, I accidentally turned off his TPN pump and had to monitor glucose and hydration in the middle of the night. And my little happy-go-lucky optimist responds to these discomforts by trying to cheerfully play through them. So instead of being up crying, he’s up jumping and playing until I pinpoint the cause of discomfort and get him settled.

So – my good intentions of writing earlier in the week were thwarted by extreme exhaustion. And then a series of coincidences landed us in the hospital for about 36 hours.. not helping sleep, but helping to remind me not to procrastinate.

Here’s a rundown of the other events of the week.

Wednesday, Patrick had an appointment with his GI, Dr. Jackson.  Patrick’s central line was a bit slow to heal this time around and was a bit weepy even 2 weeks after placement. So I asked the doctor to look just to make sure there was no infection there. Since we were looking for infection, he checked his temperature and it was 99.3. So – Patrick and I hung around for an extra couple hours in the hospital. Dr. Jackson came in and we took off his central line dressing so he could examine it up close and take a culture of any fluid that was there. It looked healthy, just healing, so I went ahead and put the dressing back on. Then we went down to the lab and had blood cultures drawn. Those cultures were all negative.

That night, I got that getting sick tickle in my throat and started to run low-grade fevers.. kind of like when you get a flu shot. Never sick, but not quite right. Since the cultures were clean, I said “Ok, he has a virus, too” and didn’t think more of it.

Friday, Brian came home early from work and since we’d all missed a lot of sleep, we all laid down for a nap. I got Patrick up to put on his afternoon TPN around 4. Only when I tried to draw ethanol out of his line, I just got air. Tried again, got air again. Finally, 3 syringes full of air later, I looked and found a hole in Patrick’s central line.

So away to the E.R. we went. They’ve implemented a new policy that sent us to the Rapid Treatment Unit (RTU) for the repair which, by the way, is WAY preferrable to the E.R. Many fewer bugs and much quicker, more attentive care. The RTU is set up to give basic medical care that takes 24 hours or less.

Well, part of any admission is to check a temperature and Patrick’s read about 100. They rechecked it rectally and it came up 99.8, so we could justify not automatically being admitted. I explained the viral symptoms, but they decided to check cultures anyway. Then they repaired the line and sent us on our way.

The next day, Patrick woke up feeling great! No fevers. So since it was memorial day weekend, we packed up and headed out to Tabiona – a small town in Eastern Utah – for a family reunion. He loved the car ride.. playing in the back seat, singing with the radio, napping, and even trying to figure out how to whistle. Had a great day with cousins, aunts and uncles.

That evening, we got home to find two messages on our answering machine. The blood cultures they’d drawn were showing a staph infection.

Now, in case you haven’t noticed this, I’ve spent a lot of time learning from infectious disease over the past year. And one thing they’ve taught me is that 1 in every 20 positive cultures is a “contaminant”.. that is, something that grew in the culture that didn’t come from the blood sample taken. And staph, although it lives on all of our skin and can get into central lines, usually isn’t one you pick up at home. It’s most often contracted in the ICU. Every positive “staph” culture Patrick has ever had has been a contaminant.

So – I called the doctor and made my case that Patrick wasn’t sick and that this was likely a contaminant. We decided to recheck the cultures on Sunday.

Well, Monday morning rolled around. For once, we were planning to be home for Brian’s day off and had a big to-do list.. And at 8 a.m. the phone rang. Sunday’s culture was positive for staph, too. Patrick’s still healthy, but we’d better go in.

So, just to be safe, that’s what we did. We got there at 9:30. Because it was a holiday, things took longer than usual.. but by early afternoon they’d drawn a new set of blood cultures and by 4:00 p.m. had started some antibiotics. Meanwhile, Patrick’s nurses got to run to try to take care of all of his basic daily needs.. a slow process when doctors have to write for them and pharmacy has to fill them before it can happen.

A quick soapbox moment. One of the most frustrating things about going into the hospital is how difficult it is to maintain the same quality of care and quality of life as at home. There are so many more steps, so many more people, and so many more lawsuit-prevention policies that it is exponentially more difficult to accomplish the same things that I do at home in the midst of daily life. In a short 36 hour stay, I think the nurses had to call the pharmacy at least 10 times about administration questions, late medications, and my ever-hated argument about whether or not they’ll let Patrick have his home TPN. (I usually lose this battle and they hang something with sugar, water and electrolytes but none of the good vitamins, minerals, and fats that he’s used to.) They started him out on a super high dose of antibiotics. (I won’t let that happen again. I’ve seen it done 3 times now with the same result and I’ll speak up next time.) And they accidentally ran his TPN at a 5% of it’s prescribed rate for the night. ( Thankfully, this only resulted in a grumpy, sleepless night as Patrick got hungrier and thirstier. They caught it in the morning and there was no other harm done.) I can’t really fault the nurses here. They work their tails off trying to get everything right within Patrick’s first 24 hours. The fact of the matter is that he’s a complex kid who has a lot of special care. For me it’s routine.. but in the hospital, it’s the exception. In fact, there are some things that require special permission every time because it doesn’t match hospital policy. Still, it’s frustrating to me to have to work so much harder to maintain the status quo. I much prefer to just do it myself at home. Ok. Getting off my soapbox now.

Yesterday morning, Dr. Jackson came on service. I ran into him at the nurse’s desk looking up info to find out why Patrick was in the hospital. We talked about the 4 sets of blood cultures that had been drawn. By then, the cultures drawn in the hospital Monday were still negative for infection. Looking back, it was looking more and more likely that we’d had two contaminants in a row. So Dr. Jackson said the words that we love him for saying so often: “I think you can do this at home. Would you like to go home?”

He helped sort out a few more questions and then set the wheels in motion for us to go home. Because they’d started Patrick on an extremely high dose of antibiotic, we had to stay till 4 to have them check his blood one more time to make sure that he’d been able to get it back out of his system. Brian got off work and up to the hospital by 5:30 p.m. and we made it home shortly after that.

Patrick will be on antibiotics for the next 2 days at least and then they’ll check cultures again to make sure that he doesn’t have a real infection. And then hopefully things can go back to our at-home normal again for a while.

Whatever happens, we’re resolved to made better use of this time at home. Procrastination isn’t really an option when you can’t tell where you’ll be hour to hour. I would hate to get the transplant call and leave my house in the condition it’s in right now.

And – I’ll be getting that blog entry about the concert up hopefully before the end of the day tomorrow.

Oh – the best news of all? With us healthy and at home, Patrick slept a blissful 11 hours last night! Which meant mom and dad got some sleep for once, too.

Unpredictable

I like planning and I like things going as planned. I’ve never been very spontaneous. Patrick is teaching me things.

We thought we’d be heading home a couple nights ago. Patrick’s weekend was completely uneventful. He was healthy and happy and doing really well. Everything was in order – he was on the schedule for his line to be placed on Tuesday and then once it was in, we were going home. We’ve done that surgery outpatient before, so why not go home the same day, right?

Monday night my nurse couldn’t find a record of him being on the surgery schedule, though.. even though I was sure they were planning on it because his surgeon had talked to me about doing it. All night long I had nightmares about him not getting his line.

But before the sun was up Tuesday morning, I was signing a consent for surgery. That afternoon, out of the blue, surgical transport came to get Patrick. I had a pow wow with his surgeon in the hall on the way down then went through the usual presurgery consent and exchange of history, kissed him goodbye, and went to the surgery waiting room. Pretty routine.

This time, though, things were just slow! This procedure usually takes 30-45 minutes. And an hour and 15 I was asking for updates from the O.R. But then, minutes later, his surgeon came to tell me the line was in and everything had gone well.

Great, I thought, and sat down to wait again. Typically 15 minutes or so after the surgeon visits me I get to go back to recovery. 15 minutes passed and then the anesthesiologist came to talk to me. He explained that Patrick had somehow been extubated during the procedure, but that he thought he was ok.

2 hours after I got to the waiting room, they finally called me to recovery. Patrick seemed to be just fine.. mellow and with tears dried in his hair, but ok. We brought him up to the room and he cuddled up with me in the rocking chair.

Soon it was time to give his afternoon medicines. Because of his allergic reaction to the caspofungin, they give him Benadryl first now and that on top of the anesthesia helped him fall very fast asleep.

Brian came and packed up the room. The doctors came and gave me discharge instructions and prescriptions. We were just waiting out the medication and waiting for his TPN to be delivered.

Then I noticed that Patrick felt rather warm. So, reluctantly, I paged the nurse and asked her to check his temperature. The result – 103.3.

Just then, the TPN arrived.. the last piece we’d needed to go home. And we were staying. They drew a bunch of labwork to look for infection, just to be safe.

Patrick’s lungs seemed a bit coarser than normal and he had a cough. The doctors theorize that the fever was a result of something that happened with the anesthesia or his airway while he was in the O.R. Throughout the night, he finally got some good coughs and his fever went down.

By morning, he seemed to be just fine. They stopped the antibiotics they’d added as a preventative measure.

So – here we are still. I’ve learned never to really count on the first discharge date we plan for… but we were so close this time!!

We’re ok, though. We’ve got a fair amount of cabin fever. And I’m definitely missing some of the comforts of home like soft toilet paper and going barefoot. But we’ll make it through. At least he’s happy and healthy and allowed to leave his room to go to the playroom where he can spend hours running around the room holding my hand with one of his, and pushing a push toy or chair with the other while i try to keep up with the IV pole.. keeping his feet out of the tubing.

We’re hoping to go home maybe tomorrow morning, now. <Knock on wood>. To do that his cultures have to stay negative and he has to not give us any more surprises.

Mother’s Day

Patrick is feeling much, much better now. The infection has been well treated with the medicines he’s getting. He’s stable, happy, and playing. Doesn’t need monitors. Doesn’t need much attention at all, except giving his medications on time. There’s only one thing keeping us here. . .

Because this is the 2nd time in a very short time that Patrick’s had a yeast infection, they wanted to make good and sure that the bug is dead before they put a new line back in. Right now, Patrick has a good “deep line” in his leg. This means that it is in deep enough that they can draw labwork out of it and give better nutrition through it. However, it doesn’t go all the way to his heart, which means that it’s not as likely to get infected – but it’s also not really the safest for taking him home with. He’ll get a new central line on Tuesday and go home as soon as possible afterwards.

So, we spent Mother’s day in the hospital. It was a good day, though very quiet. We got to visit with both Brian’s mother and mine today. Patrick got to get all dressed up and go to church. (Best dressed patient in the hospital today, I’d bet.)

Being here has been a good opportunity for me to reflect on how grateful I am for the many different types of mothers who play a part in our lives. Mothering Patrick is not the kind of job I could do all by myself.

I’m grateful for a mother and mother-in-law who’ve been willing to step up and step in to learn how to provide Patrick’s medical care so that Brian and I can get the occasional night out or so that when I’m exhausted and at my wits end I have somewhere to turn. You may not know what a rare priviledge that is that you have given to us.

We are grateful for our mothers. You prepared us to be Patrick’s parents and you help us each day to do it. I don’t think it’s possible to count the number of prayers, meals, phone calls, visits, crazy projects, and more that you have offered for our little family.

I’m grateful for sisters and a sister-in-law who are also there to help lighten my load when I need it, to fill the fun aunt roles. They are helping to raise some spectacular children, Patrick’s cousins, and him as well.

I’m grateful this week for nurses and CNA’s who have taught me how to do this job, who’ve sat rocking Patrick in the dark so I can catch a few hours’ sleep, who listen when I need to cry or share in small, although sometimes icky, triumphs and who make my day every time we see them because of how much they love my child.

I’m grateful for Patrick’s birthmother. I have no doubt that she loves and is proud of Patrick. I am impressed by her strength. I’m grateful to his birth grandmothers who trusted in their children and loved Patrick. It’s not easy to support a son or daughter considering adoption when you know it means a grandchild will be far away. We are grateful for the love and trust and support they’ve shown in us. We also owe thanks to Patrick’s aunts who helped offer comfort when needed and still are lovingly watching over him. What a blessing it is that he was born into a family who loved him so much.

This mother’s day, thank you to all of you mothers who are there for us. You come in all shapes and sizes.. friends, neighbors, family, and more. I couldn’t do this without you.

Relieving pressure

With Patrick, there are certain chain reactions you can count on. An infection will make Patrick’s spleen go into defensive mode and hold all the platelets that pass through it, kind of like people who hear a natural disaster is coming and run to the store and buy up all the food so that they’ll be prepared in case of emergency.

When the spleen sequesters (or hoards) platelets, Patrick becomes anemic. Without platelets in the blood, there’s a lot more fluid floating around in Patrick’s veins. The veins become “leaky” and the extra fluid goes and sits in any space it can find in the body.

Eventually Patrick becomes a little marshmellow baby that feels like he’s made of concrete because of all the extra fluid he’s carrying.

Last night, we added an element to this problem. When Patrick had enough fluid in his body, it became too heavy for his lungs to be able to move oxygen well and the oxygen saturation in his body dropped.

We discovered this problem as I finally got him to bed around 10 p.m. His nurse came in and put him on oxygen and then called the doctors. This started a better chain reaction for Patrick.

The extra oxygen was enough to finally mellow him out enough to sleep. Although he just kept getting puffier and puffier and needed more and more oxygen, he finally felt well enough to sleep. His kind nurse came in and held him which allowed me to get some much needed sleep.

The doctors prescribed a diuretic called Lasix that helps make it easier to shed extra fluid from the body. With just a half dose, Patrick started to to look and feel better. By his late afternoon nap, he almost looked like himself and I didn’t think my arms were going to fall off from the effort of picking him up. Better yet, his oxygen saturation improved enough that this evening they dared take off the tube that holds the oxygen on.

The best part of this chain reaction is that as Patrick is getting to feel better.. the infection clearing now that the line is out – and an end to the fluid overload problem have made it so he can finally rest. He actually was able to take naps today at their regular times, and fell asleep right about 9 p.m… not too far different from the home routine.

I’m really happy with how today went.. We just need to  make it the next couple of days without a central line and without running out of places for peripheral IV’s.

Just wanted to share that good news. There’s probably more to blog about, but I’m going to take advantage of the change to actually get some sleep tonight without having to call in reinforcements.

All too familiar

Here we are again. Back at Primary Children’s hospital – battling yeast yet again.

Sunday morning, Patrick developed a fever. It started low, but after a couple of hours, it was evident that he didn’t feel well. It seemed to both Brian and myself that he was trying to communicate with us that he wasn’t feeling well and needed help.

We’d made it through 2 hours of church, but decided it best to leave before Sacrament meeting was over. We got home, took his temperature – 101.4 – and he was starting to have chills. So we packed up and headed to the E.R. as quickly as possible.

Once we arrived, things were pretty much the usual drill.. they gave him some Motrin, took his history, drew blood cultures and started antibiotics and antifungals.

It didn’t take long for us to get into a room. But we started out right away with excitement. Before the nurse had even finished her initial assessment, Brian noticed hives forming next to Patrick’s ears. Within 5 minutes he was covered with hives from head to toe and his lips and eyes were starting to swell. They turned off the antifungal medicine and the reaction stopped and started to reverse. We think that they ran that medicine faster than his body’s used to and it caused the reaction, but it was a very scary moment to think that our preferred antifungal medication might suddenly have become off limits.

That night, Patrick was really, really sick. His fever reached over 104 degrees and he was sick to his stomach. We barely slept at all. The only rest he got was if he had both Tylenol and Motrin in his system. The problems continued through the next day and the antibiotics and antifungals didn’t seem to be making much difference until afternoon when his fever finally broke for the first time.. But his blood cultures stayed negative all day.

Around 8 p.m. a doctor came to visit us, though, and gave us results. Patrick has yeast in his bloodstream again.

The rest isn’t unexpected, but that doesn’t make it easier. Today’s been scary, stressful, and exhausting. Especially since Patrick is not cooperating with me about sleeping in his bed and neither one of us has had a good night’s sleep since we got here.

We talked to the doctors early and they confirmed that we needed to pull out his line. They also explained that Patrick’s spleen, yet again, is sequestering platelets and his blood counts are falling to dangerous levels. This means transfusions again with all the potential complications that come with that.

We spent the morning getting a little more settled in. Social work and child life came to visit. Child life talked about ways that we can help Patrick to be less afraid while he’s here. They brought him a baby doll with a little oxygen mask and blood pressure cuff to show him that they’re ok. He gave the doll lots of kisses and snuggles.. But took the blood pressure cuff off.. I think he was protecting it. They came along to all the following tests and surgery, too, to help minimize the trauma of these procedures. This was a new experience, but he seemed to enjoy it.

We went down to ultrasound around noon. They were looking for fungal balls in his organs. The poor radiology tech and radiologist were very confused trying to understand the anatomy they were seeing. I tried to explain that his gut looks funny and that his gall bladder is so small it’s almost invisible.. but they still were pretty sure his small intestine was his gall bladder. As we were leaving, the technician said “He looks so healthy, though”.. implying that on the insides he looks far from healthy.

When we got back from ultrasound Brian was waiting for us. He’d been given the afternoon off of work to come help. I was so grateful he was here!

We hurried and got ready for surgery. Just as we were about ready, the resident from the infectious disease team came to examine Patrick and take a history. Surgery showed up to take us down before he’d finished his exam. Patrick was jumping on the bed. I said to Brian “He’s just jumping because he knows he’s about to loose his foot”, referring to the fact that he’d come back from surgery with an IV in at least one foot. The guy from surgery looked up and said “Wait. What? Do I have the wrong kid?” We had a good laugh after that.

We went down to surgery with the child life specialist and infectious disease doctor in tow. After talking to the anesthesiologist, we sent Patrick on his way in a crib full of toys. Then we sat down to finish the history with infectious disease. Before we finished, Patrick’s surgeon came in.

Dr. Rollins, the surgeon, talked to us about what a dangerous situation we are in as Patrick is running out of more and more places to put lines. We’re aware of this, but hearing it vocalized by our surgeon made it all the more real.

Worse yet, he called from the OR as they were trying to place peripheral IV’s to tell us that they couldn’t get them in and to ask my permission to put in a “shallow central” line in his leg or neck. Apparently, they’d stuck him 8 times attempting to place a peripheral IV.

In the end, though, they got 2 peripheral IV’s in. Infectious disease didn’t like the idea of using a central line at all and asked them not to leave one in. So we find ourselves in a scary position now. Patrick needs IV’s for his nutrition and medication. He also needs to have labwork drawn to keep a close eye on his fragile health.. and we don’t know where else they can get needles in.

After talking to the surgeon, they let me go back to the recovery room where I found Patrick just by following his screams. He was hysterical and they told me that the anesthesiologist had prescribed me as his pain medicine. So I sat and rocked him and eventually got from screams to whimpers to sleeping.. But that was the situation for the next 5 hours or so. Patrick screamed bloody murder whenever anyone but me or Brian touched him. He was only content being held and rocked by one of us.

He just woke up about half an hour ago, though.. and for once seems back to himself. They gave him medicine for nausea and started his last transfusion of the day and it seems to have him finally feeling better. The best news is that he doesn’t have a fever.

Right now, he and his daddy and playing with toys in his crib. He’s not 100%, but doing ok for now.

Prayers for IV’s to last, for veins to be found when needed, and for Patrick to feel comfort in a very scary situation would be appreciated.

The attending from infectious disease explained that they don’t think this is the result of an untreated infection. The previous infection didn’t grow back. Instead they think these infections are coming from his gut.. and we don’t know how to stop that for now.

A lot is still up in the air. I’ll post more as I know it.

My little social butterfly

In Patrick’s last developmental evaluation by Early Intervention there were a lot of areas where his scores were low. His motor skills are several months behind. Obviously, anything to do with eating is delayed. However, there was one area where Patrick is far ahead. Social.

Here’s an example. We went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner. As usual on a Friday night, the place was packed. On the way in, Patrick spotted one of his favorite things in the world – a man with a bald head. I think he’s drawn to men who are balding because he loves his grandpas so much. Anyway, before I could dodge, he’d reached over and patted the man on his head.

The kind man turned with a smile and said “It’s ok. I’m a grandpa. I like kids.” In fact, he was holding a little boy who we learned was 11 months old.

Well, Patrick was just thrilled to have found a kind man to visit with. So much so, that he climbed right down off of my shoulders and into the man’s free arm. He held hands with the little boy for a bit, then pulled him in to snuggle a bit. It was one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen! Before long, he’d wrapped their whole party of 10 or so completely around his little finger.

This is a pretty normal occurance for us. Patrick practically begs to be held by most any kind stranger he meets. He makes friends with every person behind us in line. And a “Hi” at the top of his lungs is an every day experience.

It’s so much fun having a friendly kid.