Day 44: Sitting Up is Hard to Do!

John's day has been one of challenges. He started by throwing up at 3am but then was feeling better and was ready to read books for a bit. After several more hours of sleep, thankfully, we headed down for his upper gi test. This was done in the same room as the Barium Enema so he was understandably a little upset to start with but then was cool with it when he realized that they were leaving his pants on, poor kid. But as the day started with puking, so it continued, about 20 minutes after the doctor put in 120ml's of contrast solution into John's stomach, John gave it back plus some. When we got back to the room he threw up several more times and by the end of the afternoon he was on zofran trying to stop the nausea. We don't know if it was a reaction to the contrast solution or maybe the new blood pressure med or what, thankfully he hasn't puked this evening.

I still don't have the results of the upper gi, should get more info on that tomorrow. He continued to have x-rays throughout most of the day waiting on the contrast to travel through. The nurse practitioner did come and tell me that this isn't totally uncommon with a huge bowel surgery and that they will start feeding tomorrow, even if they have to feed through the J-tube, a tube like his g-tube but goes into his small intestine, and even if he's puking, they still feed and replace what he lost. She did assure me that we would be back to his polite little g-tube in 4 weeks or so, thank goodness the current g-j-tube is honking huge and icky. We also talked about the criteria for going out-patient - tylenol only for pain control, wound drains removed and feeding advancing. Even with all the puking she didn't think it would take long, and already John is on just tylenol tonight.

Now that his pain is more under control I was surprised that he wasn't just able to sit back up unsupported like he used too. Okay, I expected him to be a little shaky, but he was downright scared. The physical therapist came by and helped him sit up for a while, and then I sat him up again this evening. I can tell that each time he is getting a little more confident and stable.

He did get rather dehydrated from all the puking today and so spent a good portion of the afternoon feeling bad and getting rehydrated, but this evening he was in fine form. He played with his sock for a good while, we put it on each of his animals and he loved ripping it back off their feet and then when I turned back around he had put the sock on his own hand. I don't think that I've ever seen him do that.