A new year with a new begining

mmmmaybe not so...


Friday, 1-1-2010

New year's eve was an eventful night not only in Times Square, but also in the hospital.  Liam threw up a lot.  I know, I know, throwing up is almost the theme of this blog.  But this was different.  How different?  I don't know that I have the words to describe it.  It's just a parent feeling.

The rest of this post is pretty graphic.  If you don't think you can handle it, stop here.

Anyway, today we put Liam in her wheelchair and took her downstairs.  She was pretty content with this.  That was around noon.  But things changed rapidly.  Liam started to shake her had almost violently from side to side.  We put her back in bed but that did not calm her down at all.

At about 2:30 pm Rachel and the nurse were preparing to cath her.  We knew from before that Liam was bleading very lightly from her "lady area".  Maybe a result of an unsuccessful or missed cath (?).  But now they discovered a huge paddle of blood there.  Dr's and nurses rushed to the room.   Rachel and the nurse still attempted to cath her to find out where's the blood coming from.  Exactly at the same time Liam started vomiting violently - something very liquidy and green.  As if this was not enough, blood came out of her mouth (we later found out that she bit her tongue, but we didn't know that yet in the heat of the battle).  Her stool also looked abnormal.

The vomiting was so bad that they connected a drain mechanism to her feeding "button" in her belly.  That indeed helped.  However, every now and then the drain has to be clamped for a while to administer medications.  When that happens, vomiting resumes.

It took a long while to get everything to a calmer state.  That is a VERY relative term.  Liam was still restless and shaking her head non-stop from side to side.  We had to be patient and wait for lab results of her blood, urine, and few other things.

As I was leaving for the night a few lab results came back negative.  But Liam was still agitated.  WHAT A DAY!!!

(But, what am I complaining about?  I went home to my own bed;  Rachel stayed at the hospital with agitated Liam - not fun.)


Saturday:
As I came in this morning ast 8-ish, everything was quite.  Both Rachel and Liam were asleep.  Liam greeted me with a smile - WHAT A GIFT!!!  A good start for the day.  All the liquids have better colors this morning. She is still being drained via the G-tube port; she has a permanent catheter (permanent in the sense that it's there all the time; no need to cath her every few hours).
To be continued....[maybe]