home sweet home

We are home from the hospital!

He's still not eating and drinking like he should be but he's doing better. We met with his "team" this morning to figure out what our plan of attack was going to be. I had no idea he even had a "team", let alone one that included 2 MDs, a Fellow, 2 Residents, a Charge Nurse, a RN, a nursing student and a Child Play Therapist/ psychologist person. At the end of our meeting, we compromised and decided to give him a few hours to try to get him to drink 300mL before they were going to suggest/ highly encourage medicating him into a deep sleep for 24 hours to give his throat a complete rest and a chance to heal. You can imagine how I felt about that.

One of the doctors wanted to check his mouth but W was absolutely refusing to open it and that was concerning them. At that point, one of the nurses and I were trying to get him to drink some juice through a syringe but he wasn't having it. Since he wasn't opening his mouth for the doctor, she got out a tongue depressor and told W she was going to have to open his mouth for him, unless he could drink the juice for her. He grabbed that juice faster than I have seen him move in 4 days and managed to get 5mL down before he started choking. A few minutes later he took another 5mL and about 2 hours later he was able to eat 1/2 a yogurt over the course of an hour. He also had about 1/4 cup of chocolate shakey milk during the next 2 hours which was highly encouraging. But after that, he was done.

They decided to send us home, with the theory that he was making progress and would probably want to eat and drink normally once he got into his normal routine. So far, that's not really proving to be true. He has taken about 30mL of juice, but only because we tricked him and told him it was medicine and it would make him feel better.

If he doesn't improve in the next couple of days, we will have to go back. I have to count diapers to make sure he's having enough wet ones, which he isn't but I'll give him another day before I start to freak out. As much as I hate to do it, I'm going to keep pumping the pain meds into him. He's still talking through clenched teeth constantly, which means his throat is really hurting him and that's with a constant dose of Tylenol.

I'm expecting it to be another long night, but mostly because I got food poisoning from the "food" I picked up on the way home. Too bad I can't take the codeine too... It would only be fitting for us to have a rough night tonight though. It was exactly one year ago tonight that we had a horrid night of no sleep. I remember because that was the night M left on his all expenses paid trip to Iraq. One year down!! And only 3 or 4 (most likely 4) months to go. Yay us! How we have made it through is beyond me, really.