Tube Free!

The picture doesn’t lie. Eli is TUBE FREE! Well, besides the IV lines that go to his “pipes” of course. Yesterday was a bit crazy, so here’s what happened:

Eli had 2 xrays that showed that there was still swelling in areas of his intestines. They were worried there might be an obstruction, but could tell that there WASN’T one around his surgery site, which would have been very bad because it’s difficult to go back into a spot you just operated on without causing some problems. However, they still didn’t know if there was a physical kink in his intestines or not. So, they decided last night to do a CT scan. Keep in mind that running down to do an xray or a CT scan is at least a 1.5 hour process. 5 minutes for the xray and the rest is waiting for the escort to take you down and bring you back up. So the CT showed that the contrast was moving through, but not quickly enough to see if it was moving ALL the way through. Therefore, they decided to bring us back for a follow up CT scan about 2 hours after the first. Thankfully, this showed that the contrast was moving all the way through, so there was no obstruction, which meant no second surgery! Whew.

This morning, a new xray (taken at his bedside with a mobile device in about 5 minutes, novel idea) showed that there was major improvement in the swelling. So, they moved his NG tube from suction to just draining into a bag. Since that didn’t put out too much fluid, and he didn’t get sick or vomit after a few hours of having it clamped off completely, they went ahead and told him he could take his nose tube out (something he insisted on doing himself, which he did). He was definitely happy to be rid of that tube. His normal laughing and joking self came out. It was also apparent that he was feeling back to normal when he told the nurse, “Hey, you told me I could eat and drink after the tube came out of my nose, why can’t I eat?” 🙂 He had her there. She had to just apologize and try to explain that there was a mandatory waiting period before shocking his stomach with food and drink right away.

The other big news of the day was that we were moving out of the POU (where they have 3 rooms and 2-3 nurses for those rooms) to the inpatient unit (where they have 1.5 million rooms and 5-6 nurses for those rooms). Ok, I’m exaggerating, but as far as the accommodations go, this is definitely a downgrade. They paired him with a teenage girl, which should tell you that demographics have NOTHING to do with your kid’s placement when rooms are hard to find. He was actually the last one left in the POU, so they moved him out so they could shut it down, plus he really didn’t need such constant observation. In terms of going home, this is a move in the right direction. They will keep him here for a few days to get him acclimated to eating and drinking and then to the Ronald McD house so he can be in the “real world”, but still close by.

Ok, so I setup a new voicemail box that you can use to leave Eli a voice message if you’d like (for free). Simply click the button below, put in your phone number, you’ll get a call, and then it will connect you to a voicemail box that will e-mail us each new message. Then I can play the message for Eli so he can hear your voice! It’s a Google product, go figure. 🙂

Click “Next” for an update on our house situation and for my daily cuisine review. I now feel obligated to do this for some reason. 🙂