4.06.06: Yahoo! the sun is shining today

After many days of rain, literally and figuratively, the sun today was a very welcome break.

It's been a challenging week with the entire family sick and Mary taking on the first week of her new job (100+ miles from home).

Mason had the toughest week of all, which included a trip to the ER Tuesday morning. Mason's high temps and diarrhea persisted all day Monday and then he completely stopped eating. He was pale and listless on Tuesday morning. After almost 4 hours and 1+ liters of IV fluids, he was a different baby. Fortunately, all blood and urine tests were negative for infection and none of this has affected his respiratory system. By the time we left the hospital he had made a few friends, including a nurse who hand fed him a few dozen Cheerios.

The strangest symptom that Mason had was periodic acute cyanosis in his hands and feet. In an instant, both his hands and feet would turn very pale and ice cold and his hands were at times even very blue. This usually only lasted for a period of approximately 5 minutes before the color and temperature would return to normal. Even his face got pale and his lips were rather purple. I kept him on Avery's O2 saturation monitor for periods of time, and his saturation levels never dropped. It was a little scary and puzzling, and of course, he wouldn't "perform" even once while we were at the hospital Tuesday so the doctor had to just go by a description. He said it's not necessarily normal, but shouldn't be anything to worry about as long as it isn't affecting his respiratory system. He mentioned Raynaud's phenomenon which I had already looked up. I'll be doing more research on that when I have some time, to see if it really may be something Mason has, or if I can find other reasons for why he experiences that.

The good news is that Mason is feeling and acting nearly himself today. The fever has been gone for nearly two full days and he's eating better, playing more, sleeping better and diaper changes are fewer and cleaner.

As for Avery, he is definitely on the upswing. We are actually prepping for discharge finally. The plan is to take him home on Saturday. He is not quite back to himself, but that is going to take some time. However, he is to a point where we can care for him from home.

He no longer has the central line and there's no need to monitor Avery's heart and respiratory rates any longer. His saturation levels are holding steady on 1.5 liters of O2 and his lungs sound good.

Avery still has very little voice and we have to wait for his vocal cords to heal before we begin oral feedings. He will be coming home with an NG tube and a feeding pump. The NJ tube managed to come out earlier this week, so rather than go back to radiology to replace it, they reinserted the simpler NG tube to see if his stomach would digest better than before. So far he's doing okay with it.

Avery is also still experiencing some withdrawals from the morphine and is being weaned off of the methadone. It's really tough to watch him go through that and see him look so pale and drawn. With his red eyes and some of his mannerisms, it's sad to say that he really does look like a recovering drug addict. At least he is noticeably better with each day, so maybe it won't be long before he looks and acts himself again.

If all goes well, we will have a relatively healthy family back at home together again this weekend.