Home... For Now

We're home, but I don't know if we'll be staying... When we got home yesterday evening, Holden passed out for a few hours and then woke up screaming and crying miserably. I finally got him to sleep for the night after a very traumatic bath, and he slept until 10am this morning. We thought it was just exhaustion from the hospital stay, but now I'm not so sure.

We took him to the hospital lab this morning to check his electrolytes, BUN and creatinine. All of those numbers actually looked pretty good, but now we have new issues. After giving him fluids while in the hospital, he puffed up a little bit and stopped peeing. (This seems to be a common theme with him whenever he gets IV fluids.) He was dehydrated when we started the fluids on Tuesday, he wasn't getting full feeds while admitted, and he still has diarrhea from the c-diff infection, so we thought he just didn't have anything to pee out.

Last night, we started him on a sodium supplement to bring his numbers back up (which worked beautifully, according to his labs), but the salt in it has only caused him to retain more water. He's been so tired and out-of-sorts today, and he's been acting so miserable. When his respiratory rate went up and his work of breathing got too heavy, we had to put him back on oxygen. He hasn't had to be on oxygen support since we left the hospital for the first time back in March, so this isn't a popular choice.

Until we can get some of this fluid out of him, he's going to have trouble. I feel like we've been in this exact same position before, because we have. We prayed and did the pee dance many times during his stay in the hospital.

His stomach is starting to look a little bit distended again, which we know can be the beginning of bad things for Holden. We gave him an extra dose of diuretics this afternoon, and we haven't seen anything from it yet. We're going to try another double dose this evening, along with some sodium-free formula, and hopefully that will help turn things around for him. If not, we'll be heading back up to Children's in the morning. And of course, if he gets any worse tonight, that will mean an ER visit.

So if you get the chance this evening, please say a prayer for our little man. Specifically, please pray for pee, once again.