Not so quick update

Here's a summary of our past few weeks: After I signed off of the last post, the doctors and nurses tried to take Michael's ventilator out. His throat was too swollen so they ended up putting the ventilator back in. Only they couldn't fit the same size tube in and had to put a smaller tube in. So that was on Sunday. I watched him crash...he stopped breathing on his own and they had to "bag" him (breathe for him with the mask with the blue squeeze balloon). I can't even describe how scary it was to watch him go through that. The doctor didn't get the tube back in the first try because his throat was so swollen. That's when I left the room. K said they got the tube in the second try.

Anyway, so he was on the ventilator again for 5 days. The first night (Sunday night) after the whole situation he kind of crashed again. He had to go back on some meds that he had previously gotten off of. The nurse called us at 2:30 am to tell us this. The rest of the week they weaned him off these meds and slowly turned down his oxygen help on the ventilator. He was also given steroids to help his throat swelling. Amongst other drugs. I don't remember everything he was on. Some antibiotics, stomach meds, a feeding tube, monitors, ventilator, etc.

Friday at 12:30 pm they took the ventilator out for the second time. They wanted to wait for an ENT to be there, so they scheduled it. The ENT said his throat was irritated, but it looked fine. No swelling again. He did really well breathing after it was out. However, his tummy started getting bigger and bigger. At first, they thought it was because he had been "bagged" again the night before because he wasn't keeping his oxygen levels up. (That was because the ventilator tube was too small). So they were draining his tummy to try to get the air out and getting a lot of old, brown blood. His tummy just kept growing and was very hard. So they did some x-rays and found out that he had "free air" in his abdomen. Not supposed to be there. It meant that there was a leak from his intestines into his abdomen. There is supposed to be air in the intestines. The pediatric surgeon was called back to the hospital. By this time it was maybe 5:00 and the surgeon was on his way home from work.

Michael ended up going into surgery at 6:30 pm and they found a perforated ulcer in his small intestine (meaning it had broken through the intestinal wall). The surgeon said it was easy to fix, but they had to clean the intestines off since there was formula everywhere. Michael was in surgery for 2 hours. He had to be back on a ventilator since they didn't want to stress his body any more. The doctors and nurses said it was very, very rare to have this happen. It happened because of all the stress on his body from being sick and on a ventilator...and the steroids didn't help, either. I felt so bad for him. He was awake from 12:30 until 6:30 and he just looked like he felt miserable. I was super scared, too, not knowing what was going on...just knowing something was terribly wrong.

That was Friday...Sunday they took the ventilator out again and he did well. I was not in the room for either of the last two times they took the ventilator out. I went somewhere else and came back later. I didn't want to see him crash again if it happened. Monday he spiked a fever. The surgeon thought it could have been because of his central line since he'd had it in for almost 2 weeks. So they put a new central line in on Tuesday. Wednesday they took him off his drugs and started the withdrawal meds. Wednesday late afternoon he also got moved to a regular room. They needed the PICU room for a new patient who was on a ventilator. He ended up having to share a room with another RSV baby. We asked the nurses very nicely a few times if we could please move to a different room because while I knew that he is immune to RSV for this season now, I didn't want to take any chances. Plus the roommates were strange. The mom and daughter of the baby boy both stayed overnight (K did, too) and both snored. And both babies woke up off and on so nobody got a good night's sleep.

I should mention that K spent 15 of the 19 nights in the hospital with Michael. (And 1 night with Samuel.) The other 4 nights Michael was on his own. I am a chicken and couldn't handle sleeping there with all the monitors and stuff going off. It stressed me out enough during the day. But I felt guilty not being there. And felt guilty being there and not being home with the other two kids. Ah, the joy of motherly guilt.

Michael got to come home on Saturday which was great, but he was also going through drug withdrawal. It was pretty rough. He cried a lot (it was a high pitched cry - sounded like a cat) and screamed at the top of his lungs. I literally wore earplugs when I changed his diaper sometimes because he was so loud it hurt my ears. He didn't sleep very well and during the day we had to walk around with him or he would scream. I don't know what the poor boy was going through but it seemed awful. Don't do drugs!

By Wednesday he was pretty much back to his normal, happy self. I'd say Friday he was 100% back. He regained muscle strength really well and was sitting up on his own and rolling over already. It took a little while to get him back to eating well. He's still not eating as much as he was before the hospital stay and he did lose about a pound. Both boys had their 9 month check up on Tuesday and Samuel was 2 pounds heavier than Michael.

Michael is still waking up once a night to eat. And he is a mommy's boy at night. So I guess I should get to bed. Thank you so much for praying for him! I'm so so so so glad to have my sweet bubba back home.

Here he is last Saturday. I love this boy!