Short Lived Joy

We had a wonderful day on Friday, with LB feeling very positive about being done with the "nap doctor," then at bedtime his NJ-tube (feeding tube) got plugged.  We worked and worked and worked on it with no luck.  At about midnight we gave up and decided to try again in the morning.  If it didn't clear pretty quickly we would take him up to PCMC.

At around 3am, mommy was awaked by a crying LB.  I went into his room to try to concole him, with no luck.  He had only had about 300 calories the day before because of his radiation therapy, so he was really hungry.  I was exhausted and tried to get him to sleep, but with no luck, so I went to work on the tube again.  At 4:30am I asked LB if he wanted to go to the hospital to have his tube fixed and he gave me a big smile and nodded his head "yes."  So, off we went.

We had quick a wait in the ER because we obviously weren't the most urgent case there, and about 8am the doctor came in to see us.  They wanted to try getting the tube unclogged themselves.  No luck.  So we made the decision to put a new one in.  It is really painful for LB when he gets a new tube put in (that's why we all worked so hard to avoid that), so I asked if they could please sedate him.  They couldn't do that, but they did give him a drug called Verced which is very relaxing and causes him to forget the whole experience.  With that in his system, things went very smoothly.

Until they didn't.  When LB was hooked up to the monitors before he was given the Verced, we noticed that his heartrate was elevated - up to 150.  We thought it was because he was in pain with a headache, he was dehydrated, and hungry.  We figured it would come back down after he got some food and painmeds.  We placed the tube, and then waited, but his heartrate went up instead of down.  It got as high as 170 at one point.  Because of his history with his heart, the decision was made to admit him.  As the day went on his heartrate bounced around between 140-155ish, and he developed a fever.  We thought he might have Strep like his big sis, but that came back negative.  So he is still there this morning.  His heartrate this morning is still around 140, but his fever is down.  Dad is up there right now, and he is waiting to talk to the doctors to decide what we'll do from here.

So, we thought we were going to have a two week break, and we didn't even get a 12 hour one.  Little Buddy was seriously bummed to be back in the hospital yesterday.  He was upset about having to stay and wanted to come home.  Who can blame him?  We were all so excited to do done with radiation, then Wham!  We're all very discouraged by it, and are feeling that life just isn't fair.  (Isn't that something that you only say when you are 8?  Apparently not.)