Monday

Hello friends!~
Well some good and bad news. Joshua had an echo on Monday and it seemed to look just fine! PRAISE THE LORD! There were no significant changes and it doesn't appear that he is in rejection. We are still waiting for his labs to come back so that we can see his Cyclosporine level. We are hoping that it is not low. His BNO is up a little but that can be cause by other things as well.
Sunday I had a total DUMB moment. I was giving Joshua his meds and inadvertently added one med into the bottle of another! I had to call Dr B and ask if I ruined it or if he thought that I could continue to use it. The consensus was that it was such a small amount, I put the Dilaudid into the Ativan bottle, we should be fine. We got to talking about Joshua and I had told him that he had been having a little more vomiting than usual but nothing that I was overly concerned about. We started talking about the amount of fluids that I have been giving to him (which had lessened over the course of a couple days) and the fact that his last set of labs appeared to show that he was rather dry. The conclusion, that we would go from 3 doses of Bumex (diuretic) to 2. Sounded good when we talked about all the numbers. :) Why is it that everything seems to look better on paper? So, he had 3 doses on Sunday. I have him his midnight dose and not another one until noon the next day. Well in the meantime his lungs got a little junky. I could hear something rattling and thought that MAYBE it was just in his throat. After a little mommy chest PT and some induced coughing (by touching the back of his tongue) I felt defeated. I could still hear something and couldn't tell now where the 'noise' was originating from. I called the Transplant Coordinator and asked if when we came in for the echo that afternoon, if they could listen to Joshua's lungs and let me know what they thought. He had a slight increase in breathing, it was a little faster with little flaring. Right before we went into the echo Joshua threw up a HUGE amount of mucous, mainly out of his nose! EWWW. So we went to his echo and by this time he is really retracting, flaring and head bobbing. Jason had told Dr Kemna that I had called and she agreed to see us right after the echo. GREAT SERVICE! :) So needless to day by the time that she saw him he was in pretty bad shape. She said had this happened at 8 am she would have told us to go back to the house and come back at 4 but because it was so late she "didn't feel comfortable sending us on our merry way." Maybe she missed the fact that both of us were covered in baby puke and it would have been hard to be happy in the best of circumstances! So needless to say, he was admitted back in the hospital.
He spent the night and was given meds to dry him out a little and we got to see a few of our friends but we would have liked to have seen a couple more! We can sneak in during the day to see our nurse friends and doctors but not so much at night. We miss them the most!
He required a little oxygen and they want repeat labs and an echo so we are going to stay one more night and then should be able to go back to the house.
I am thinking that they were really taking pity on me having to bring Joshua back! The resident was joking with the doctors at rounds telling them how much she knew I missed Montana and that we really needed to get him fixed up and out the door as soon as possible. Dr Kemna just looked at me and asked if we had talked at all about when we can go home. Kelly said that she had mentioned to me a month. Which was true but they also thought that we would be here a month at another visit.....A YEAR AGO! I have learned to not get to psyched about future events. :) Well they told me today that they were feeling confident, VERY CONFIDENT, that I would be taking my little son back home to Montana to join the rest of our family BEFORE JUNE!!!! YYYYIIIIIIPPPPPPEEEEEEEE!!!! I am so thrilled.
Of course we will be on major house restrictions and won't be able to see anyone for a while but hey.....we will be in town!
I also want to send out a HUGE THANK YOU for all of you who helped put together the fundraiser for Joshua last weekend and everyone who came out and showed their support! Aunt Sharon, you have NO IDEA how much we appreciated this and how thankful we are!! You did a GREAT job! We are going to be having some major financial issues over the next year (or so) with me loosing my job, James being in treatment, the issues that we are dealing with regarding water damage to our house and getting it ready for Joshua to be there. This money will be put aside for his medication co-pay (which this month was over $650) and the cobra payment so that I can keep him insured as long as I can. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.
Blessings,
Leah for the Garrison Family