Discharged!

By the time Brian and I were heading back to town Sunday, Dr Waldman was calling me telling me she thought the bald kid was ready to go home. Though she didn't actually call him the bald kid- she called him that sweet boy of yours.  By the time we got down there, all his paperwork was done, and his nurse was ready to pull his IV and send us on our way. Fastest discharge from The Mercy ever.

Flashback to Friday night....my sister Kate went down to be with him at the hospital, and said he was yet still possessed. If she even looked at him he screamed. All he wanted to do was lie in his bed and rock out to Taylor Swift. Good thing Dad remembered to bring his CDs.  

Then I guess sometime during the night his feeding tube came open and in the yuckiness of his stomach contents they found blood. Surgery was called to do a consult, and they felt he may have had a bleeding ulcer. Hmmmmm. Ok.  So they switched his feeds off and put him on all Pedialyte.
He got another enema, fearing he was still constipated, thus the crummy attitude.

He was weaned down to 1/2 liter of oxygen by nasal cannula on Friday night, and by Saturday night they turned it off, and he stayed above 90 on room air even while sleeping.

Because he got the dose of IVIG on Friday, he won't get his subQ dose at home until weekend after next.   Immunology felt like the parainfluenza virus was the one that hit him hard, and was worse because of his lower IgG.   They may increase his home dose this winter if we start seeing hospitalizations from these viruses.   I'd rather not wait until we have any more hospitalizations, but what do I know??

We are back on Pulmicort twice daily and his nasal spray once a day to help keep the respiratory stuff under control.  It seems to be helping, so we will stick with it!

Dr Waldman was very concerned about his heart rate. I explained that we and Dr Kaine know about his bradycardia, and it really is just Ethan's normal. However he did get down as low as 38 and hovered around 44 for a while. But during those episodes didn't appear to be in any distress, and then would recover and jump back up into the 60's.  Dr Waldman spoke with Dr Kaine himself, and he assured her this was his normal.  But, we are following up with Cardiology in December instead of January now.

The Rawleys spent Sunday night making laundry soap so we could do all our laundry, made some homemade chicken and noodles for dinner,  "bathed" the hospital funk off the baldy, and then hunkered down for our favorite Sunday night shows including the season premiere of The Walking Dead.   We love that show. And it sure helps prep us for the zombie apocalypse.

I have another follow up for my knee tomorrow, and Ethan has a discharge follow up in the Pediatric Care Center.  If all goes well, he's going back to school Wednesday, only to be off Thursday and Friday for teacher inservice days!  Oh well, it will be a short week for him!  Thank goodness Brian is off those days too!

Thanks everyone for helping us out this weekend so Brian and I could still go on our weekend 'date'.  We tried a new restaurant on Friday night-The Vinyards and it was fantastic!  As always lunch at The Avalon was wonderful and more so with our new friends the Satters.  And  Thanks Vuljes for joining us at O'Malleys!  We hope you had a good time!  And thank you to everyone who took care of our little guy this visit. He had a fabulous team and awesome nurses. One of his nurses took care of him when was admitted in March the same day I had my surgery and she remembered him. We realized that we have a friend in common, one also with a child with 18q!  Small, small world!  

Tonight we watched Katy Perry's movie, and Ethan really enjoyed it. 
The blonde singer in his life might just have some competition from a dark haired one. 
Or pink haired.
 Or blue haired. 
Whatever-he sure loved her music and we loved seeing him laugh again!