The grand tour

Matthew has decided to do a tour of hospitals. October and November was Childrens in Omaha; November and December was Childrens' in St Paul. February is St. Elizabeth's which is a bit closer to home for us and since I work here, it makes things a little easier.

Last week, Matthew started sleeping; ALOT. He was only a wake 1-2 hours a day. By Friday, I figured I better at least let someone know what was going on. His doctors in MN suggested I give 2 ounces of juice to see if his blood sugar was low. Since he is on the ketogenic diet; and gets very little sugar, this can be a concern. I gave Matthew 2 ounces of juice and he woke up almost immediately and then preceded to be awake all night. Dr. D had also requested that I give him a phone call on Saturday with an update. When I told him that things were looking better, he said; "well he's probably getting sick, keep a close eye on him". When your body is fighting something, it uses more glucose than normal and since he is getting very limited glucose, he most likely had a low blood sugar.

Sunday morning he woke up coughing and vomiting. He continued to cough and vomit most of the morning; so I called our on-call pediatrician for some cough syrup. She wanted to see him the office that day instead (our office has "sick" Saturday and Sunday hours). By the time she had seen him Sunday; he had vomited 40 times, and was vomiting continuously in the office. She wanted him admitted immediately. And I didn't get my cough syrup I wanted, either.

It took 8 pokes to get his IV in, and the last 5 were from the anesthesiologist. He is one of my favorite anesthesiologists too. He worked so hard and so patiently but Matthew was sooo dehydrated. When we put Matthew on the scale, he had lost a pound since he had been in the doctors office on Wednesday, all from dehydration. Sunday, they gave over 800 cc's of fluid before he had a wet diaper. They were wanting to put a catheter in him; but I requested that they just be a bit more patient. As soon as he caught up fluid wise, he has been fine.

I can do a lot of things for Matthew at home, but when he won't keep fluids down, I am sunk. And Matthew just doesn't have the reserve to be able to tolerate being dehydrated.

This hospital stay does NOT have me worried. If he were one of my other kids, he would be at home, sucking on popsicles and ice chips, getting room temp baths and lots of love. But like I said; Matthew's body cannot tolerate being off balance, so here we are.

Today he's still coughing a lot, but not so hard that he is vomiting. They have his feedings back at 2/3 the amount of normal. And there is talk of letting him go home late tonight or tomorrow if they can get him to tolerate full feedings and his medications.