Back at the hospital

This run of methotrexate and vincristine seem to be giving James quite a challenge. Monday evening we realized that something wasn't right with his g-tube site. It looked thinner and looser and sort of purplish-gray. I called the clinic on Tuesday morning and they said since is wasn't pink or red and he didn't have a fever there wasn't too much they could do. They said keep dressing it like we had planned, give James meds for pain and call them if anything changed.

Thursday we had a hard time keeping him comfortable and that night, when we changed out his dressing, we all thought we could see the balloon inside his tummy that holds the g-tube in place through the ever-thinning and widening hole. We called and talked to the on-call doctor and she said come on up. We'd already planned to try to get him in to see his doc on Thursday after he was so uncomfortable, but the kicker was the view of the balloon. He'd also had pretty low white counts (ANC=117) on Monday.

We made it to the ER by about 3 a.m. this morning and as I lifted James from his car seat to carry him in, his g-tube just fell out onto the parking garage floor. (Eeeewww) Fortnately this seemed to relieve the pressure to the site and he had less pain than he had before, PTL.

Right now he is on more antibiotics, we think it is infected again, but not sure with what yet. The wound/ostomy nurse set him up with a pretty spiffy dressing and we are supposed to take care of it. Tomorrow James will get IV feeds (TPN) with a greater portion of protein to , hopefully help him heal.

The one good thing is that the things we did to help prevent this did seem to help with the erosion from the outside. Virtually all the erosion to the site was from the inside, Since he will have a similar course of treatment every 12 weeks for the next 22 months, we need to figure out some way to prevent or minimize this erosion to his g-tube site. I would appreciate your prayers for wisdom as we work together with his care team to devise some sort of plan.

We have been working hard on our house with the goal of being able to live in it by 2 or 3 Nov. By God's incredible mercy, we are still very hopeful we can make it. Katie, Owen, Becca and Carrie worked there today and we have made a good deal of progress in the past week. Please pray for them and for Vern as we are all 'dividing and conquering'.

I hope to have an opportunity to update again while we are here. We have been having technical difficulties with the computer at home... and we have been VERY busy. Your notes and e-mails have been a big encouragement...thanks so much!

Love, Stephanie