A trip to the ER

We had a trip to the ER at Primary Children's Medical Center last night. Josh is now sporting this lovely thing.........


.... a feeding tube.

In the previous post I was updating about his therapist growing more concerned each week about Josh. Well yesterday morning I wake up to a call from the Feeding Clinic down at Primary's. They had been talking about Josh and taking into consideration what his therapist was concerned about and had a lot of in depth questions. They decided that there needed to be something done about his lack of eating and drinking. So they started off with having me take him to our local hospital to have an x-ray done of his tummy to see if he had anything seriously wrong in his bowels. They also told me they were going to be placing an NG Tube at some point this weekend, which is a feeding tube, as well to get him the hydration he needs. I did the x-ray and waited for a call from the clinic. About 2:45 pm I recieve a call that they found something on the x-ray and we were to take him to the ER at Primary's. So I scramble and get the kids taken care of for the night, (Thank you to everyone.... mom, chan, shari) and Scott rushed home to go with me.

We got down there and had a 3 hour wait in the ER. They finally took him back and when the Dr came in he looked at Josh and said his tummy was distended and hard. He needed a bowel clean out as well as the NG tube. He originally was going to start an IV to get him some hydration, but after talking to the GI doctor on call decided to put the tube in first and get some pedialyte down him to see what happens. He also didn't want to do a bowel clean out if there was an obstruction, so he ordered more in-depth x-rays. In the meantime Josh had the tube put in, which was very traumatic for him... I felt sooo bad. Then the doctor came back in with the results from the x-ray and told us that everywhere there is a possible place for stool, he had it. His colon was full, everything was full. So they did the bowel clean out, another traumatic thing for poor Josh, and about an hour later, he had filled 3 diapers and was calm again. It was very rough on him and he was in pain, but at least it worked (it doesn't always work). So he was suddenly a very happy boy... at 1am! His tummy was about half the size it has been for days and was no longer rock hard. I was amazed at the difference. So after all that we were finally released with instructions on the tube feeding. We will call his regular GI doctor on monday to find out what changes she wants to make, but for the weekend we do a feeding every 2 hours. So far it has been going good and he seems to be used to the tube now.

We don't know how long he will need the tube, but I do know he will need to be intaking the same amount of fluids orally as he does through the tube before they take it out. Part of his problem is his fear of drinking. So we need to work through that. I would suspect he probably will have it for several weeks.

So that was my fun day and night. I NEVER want to do that again! Thanks again to our families' for helping out at the last minute with the boys! We have an amazing family and we couldn't do this without them!