Day 39

Holden's labs came back this morning with a lipase count in the 900's... Still elevated, but MUCH better than the 2000's we saw yesterday. He's throwing up more today though, which makes him feel worse, even if the numbers show improvement. All babies are pathetic when they're sick, and he's no exception... I wish I could wave my magic wand and make all the pain go away!

The GI dr. came by this morning, and didn't have much new information to add. I guess I was kind of hoping he'd look at him and have something brilliant in his back pocket, but like the old saying goes... "If wishes and buts were candies and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas." (I don't even know if that makes sense, but I didn't coin the term.) Evidently, we're already doing everything we can for him, which sucks, because it's not enough.

We are going to pull his feeding tube today, and replace it with a new one. All of his oral meds go through the tube straight to his intestines... Every time we give him anything through the tube, he throws up, so we'll try something new and see if he tolerates it any better. They're going to put the new tube into his stomach instead of his intestines, and we'll see how he likes that. It can't hurt anything, since he's already puking. We'll have to push it back down into the intestines once we start trying to feed him again, but that won't be for a couple of days anyway.

He also had another echo done around lunchtime. Nobody had said anything about doing another one this soon, so I was of course freaking out a little bit, thinking they were worried about something and just not telling us... Evidently, they just want to take another look at his heart to see how his function is now compared to the last echo right after extubation. His heart seems to be dilating and relaxing more, which is a great thing that nobody saw coming. Maybe they'll come in this afternoon and tell us he's going to be fine without a transplant? I can always dream. :)