Ending the hunger strike

The only task Colin needs to accomplish before coming home is to be able to eat without his NG (nasal-gastro) tube. (We’d love him to be off oxygen, but he doesn’t have to be in order to come home.) Unfortunately, that simple task of eating continues to be beyond Colin’s grasp. In fact, we’ve been backsliding on his eating, despite the devoted and persistent attention of his nurses and parents. 

So yesterday, we decided to make an all-out attack on several possible reasons for his lack of interest in eating: at the doctor’s suggestion, we addressed his low hematocrit levels with yet another transfusion; he got another chest x-ray to make sure he doesn’t have any new problems that would cause him to work harder on breathing (and have less energy left for eating; and we [finally] are trying him on Prevacid to see if John and I (and several nurses) are right about him having reflux. (We had asked about this twice before. I guess 3rd time’s the charm on this one.)

So far, the push seems to be working: Colin took all his feeds by bottle overnight. (Of course, he had his magic nurse who always seems to have success with him and eating, so we’ll have to see how the day goes.) 

His nurse also had him off the oxygen overnight without any problems. Of course, when I called this morning to let them know I was going to miss the 9:00 feeding, I forgot to ask if he was back on or not. Silly me. 

I’m getting rather anxious (and discouraged) right now, since I am going back to work in less than two weeks. I really would like to have him home before I go back — otherwise, squeezing in my Colin time is going to make for a brutal schedule. At this point, I don’t expect that he’ll make it (home before I go back to work that is), but I would feel better if we at least were making progress. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed, again.