Colby finally had a bowel movement! I know I've been rambling on and on about Colby's pooping vs. non-pooping, but currently it's an important part to his recovery. He got an ileus, meaning his tummy and intestines said, we're sleeping and don't want to work right now. If I never hear the word "ileus" until the day I die, I'm cool with that. They said an ileus had to resolve itself and would take 7-10 days. It's been 5 days or so now. I don't know if Colby is completely out of the woods with it, but he's doing much better. We started his feeds last night at 5 mL/hour. That's a teaspoon, by the way. Today we increased it to 10 mL/hour. And that's all I want for now. I'm going to have him keep him on that all through the night. If he does okay, we'll go to 15 mL/hour in the morning and maybe 20 mL/hour tomorrow night. You get the drift, it's a very slow process.
The ortho surgeon came in very early this morning. Today Colby is post op day 7 from surgery. Can you believe it's been that long already? Ortho said they would take off the glue/dressing strip on day 7. However, the surgeon was aware of Colby's poop problems. He suggested to leave on the dressing until Colby had a bowel movement (BM), in case Colby had a blow out, to protect the incision. Boy he hit the nail right on the head. That's exactly what happened. Colby "did his business" in an outrageous way. After getting him cleaned up, we removed the glue/dressing off Colby's incision. The incision looks wonderful, no redness, no oozing.
We also took Colby down for spine x-rays. It was awful. I knew it would be. Another SMA mommy warned me. We had to sit Colby up. No back brace of course, and we had to be super careful to not twist him, have his head fold down or his legs fold up. We gave him some "happy juice" before heading to radiology, thank goodness. Wish they had given me some, too! But we powered through it and got the damn x-rays done. Surgeon said they looked beautiful. Of course he did, it's his work haha.
Colby's chest x-ray and abdominal x-ray both showed "improvement" this morning. More progress! My guess is, if he tolerates his feeds okay and continues to pee/poop at a reasonable pace, we will go to the TCC tomorrow. Then from there start talking discharge plans. Oh happiness. I was just about at the end of my rope today, thinking Colby was stuck, not making progress, etc. Then bam, suddenly things started moving forward again.
Okay, they are getting ready to close the Resource Center, so I will get this posted and on my blog. More tomorrow. I'll be reporting more progress, right? Darn tootin'
So glad to hear about the poop! And that his incision looks great. (BTW, where is my pic?)
ReplyDeleteI can imagine that the xrays were stressful and an ordeal. I don't remember having to do that with Casey but it was a long time ago, and Casey was much smaller than studly Colby :)