Saturday in the hospital, I think it is the 5th of March...

First of all, how many of you are now humming the true song that my title is based on? ;)

Second, sorry for the late update. It seems that every time I picked up the computer to update, Caleb needed to potty or was throwing up again. Also, we were trying to wait until after we saw the docs before we updated & we were expecting them to come by much earlier than they actually did.

And now, today's story....

Well, today has been an interesting mix. Caleb woke up several times during the night to go to the bathroom, but never the kind we needed him to have to get off isolation. Everything that went his mouth this morning came right back out within 30 minutes, but he kept trying to eat. The poor child is so hungry, he doesn't even care if he's gonna throw up again, he just wants food.  

Finally around 10:30 a.m, he ate some saltine crackers & a few sips of apple juice (laced with Miralax). Over the course of 2 hours, he ate a total of 12 crackers & 4 oz of juice. He was able to keep it down for the majority of the day. We thought we were finally getting somewhere with this. 

Caleb's friend, Stacy, came by with her mom & dad (thanks Dawn & Pete). They played for a while & ate popsicles together. Caleb had a wonderful time & it was a welcome relief (for me) from watching the original Transformers series all day long.

The doctor made it to us around 1:30 p.m. this afternoon. We discussed what to do about Caleb's inability to defecate.  We believe the main reason is because of all the pain medication we've had him on since the beginning of January 2011. We decided to use an enema to help get things moving. They also added another medication that is supposed to counter-act the constipation caused by the morphine (sorry, Dar, I don't remember the name of it). 

He received his enema & within 5 minutes had produced a bowel movement. We finally got what they needed to run the test so he could get off isolation & go to the playroom. Then they tell us it could take up to 2 days to get the results back!!  This is the first time we've been admitted since October 2010 that Caleb has even wanted to leave the room & he can't yet. 

Caleb ordered pancakes, scrambled eggs & a fruit cup for dinner. Once it arrived around 6:30 p.m., he only ate a couple bites of each thing.  I was just starting the blog update at 8:30 p.m. & ready to say that he hadn't thrown up since 10 a.m., when dinner reappeared. :(

After he finished, we got him cleaned up again & he asked for some more morphine. The good news is that the morphine is helping.  As I mentioned yesterday, Caleb's been in constant pain for at least the last three months & not good about letting us know.  His pain level consistently stays around 4 out of 5 or 5 out of 5. For the past 2 days, he's been saying 6 out of 5. Within 15 minutes of having the morphine, we asked him what his pain level was and he said 2!  I honestly don't remember when he was last at a 2. We are, of course, continuing the morphine because we want to be able to stay on top of the pain instead of playing catch up. 

Thanks so much to all of you for your prayers. We know that prayer changes things & Caleb is proof of it. Please continue to pray that he is able to keep down oral food/drinks so we can continue to push the stool softeners so he can let his pipes flow the way they are meant to. If he can't, the next possible step is to place a tube down his nose into his abdomen/intestine area to push the stool softener directly through until he's flushed out. Not a pleasant prospect at all for him or us, so prayerfully it won't come to that.

I am hoping to update sooner tomorrow if I can. Thanks for understanding that it is sometimes a bit more difficult to be timely under these circumstances.


Oh! I almost forgot. Richard surprised me yesterday & brought my camera up so I was able to take a pic of the star machine in our room.  Here's what our ceiling looks like at night:

Angel

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