Riley Day 41

Another day starting with some iv team digging in Tyler's veins trying to get more blood. He is a tough stick. After a half and hour they still were only able to collect enough for one of the three labs! Poor baby; I hate seeing him go through this. During rounds today I wanted to find out about the clot in the SVC. It sounds like they are ok with him going home with it completely blocked off as long as he is doing well clincally. We will have to watch him very closely for any signs of complications as he grows. Right now the blood is going through a different vein to get where it needs to go, so we are not seeing any immediate distress. As he grows, the other vein may not be able to handle the blood flow and we would need to think about a surgery. They still were not sure of a plan for right now. They would be talking with the surgery team tomorrow. It doesn't look like we will be going home until early next week if he continues to do well.

I showed the doctors the chunks from yesterday's vomit and they were all shocked by them. I hate to say I told you so to the doctors..but I told them so! ( I had only been bringing up my concerns since Sunday when he first puked up the chunks.) They had never seen that either and were going to have a GI doctor come check him out later today. About time! Glad to see that he will have that looked at because his feedings are becoming increasingly difficult and he shows pain after he takes only 10 mils.

The GI team came to check him out this afternoon and were fairly confident that the chunks are lacto bezoar. This is where the milk becomes like cheese in the stomach to form a large hard chunk. They think that pieces may be breaking off and coming out in the vomit. They will do a test tomorrow with dye to determine if this is really what it is. If they find the mass, they will have to discuss removing it so that Tyler will have more space in his tummy. He is very uncomfortable today and each feed has become more difficult because it hurts for him to eat even through the NG tube. Every time I put him down today he screams and arches his back because his stomach hurts. I hope that this is the problem and that they will be able to solve it tomorrow and he will start feeling and eating better soon.

What a day! Tyler has a lot going on and I just hope we can get things resolved quickly so that we can manage them at home. Anne came over this afternoon so we could have a girl's night here with Tyler. We went out to dinner and then came back to hang out with the little man. We are having fun watching a chick flick with Tyler. He is enjoying hanging out with Anne. She gave his nurse a good suggestion for feeding him tonight using a slow drip on a pump. It is working well and he is not crying at the moment.