A Long Time

It's been a long time since we've updated our blog. Our family has been very busy this year.
James had a pretty eventful year with several hospitalizations, some being severe enough to land him in PICU and on a ventilator. He is still an amazing little boy with the brightest smile. He has learned new things this year like shaking his head yes and no! Elliot has also grown like a weed. Already 1 year old and being a terror! He is all over the house and into everything, even going up the stairs by himself. Too bad he doesn't know how to come back down yet. He is a very daring boy-will stand up on his toy bike and get right back on the stairs even if he's just fallen off! Andy stayed busy with softball this summer and bike-riding with the boys. He spends a lot of time with the boys and is great with them. They are definately daddy's boys. I spent a lot of time with James in the hospital and working. My new work schedule is not ideal and so I'm tired a lot of the time and always playing catch-up with my sleep. I did have the opportunity to go to Baltimore this October for work. It was beautiful and I learned a lot. We are planning to spend the Christmas holiday in North Dakota with my family and get together with Andy's family in January.

You'd think we live in the clinic/hospital

Today, or I should say yesterday now, was a big day for both James and Elliot. We'll start with Elliot. As I'd mentioned before he has an abssess on his bottom. In early Feb they drained it with a scalpal, but it hasn't really healed yet. It's getting there but taking a long time. We've gone back in to see the general peds surgeon three times now. The first time, he lanced the absess and drained it again. That didn't help. The second time he used silver nitrate. That seemed to be helping, until one night it built up a huge pus pocket. Today I noticed a second abssess forming just a couple of centimeters away from the first. So we saw the surgeon for the third time today and he scheduled him to be sedated next week through the ambulatory surgery department and they'll take a little mesh wire kind of thing and clean out the tract where this abssess has formed. The surgeon thought the second abssess is just the other end of the abssess.
Now onto poor James. My beautiful little boy, he's so strong. He's had a cold for 2 weeks now and starting yesterday (that would be Thursday in my thoughts right now) he seemed to be getting more tired and lethargic and not eating as well. I took him into the clinic this afternoon and they admitted him to the hospital for respiratory distress. He was really working hard to breath with a low-grade fever, runny rose and cough. He was requiring oxygen to keep his oxygen saturation levels high enough (that would be the level of oxygen in your blood-most people are 97-100 most of the time. James was in the low 80s without oxygen). After a few nebulizers and couple of hours in pediatrics the attending physician decided that James had gotten worse and transferred him to Pedicatric Intensive Care Unit where he'd have a one-on-one nurse and monitored much closer. He was put on continuous nebulizers and is getting antibiotics and steroids. They swabbed him for flue and RSV but think it's a bronchiolitis and exaserbation of his Reactive Airway Disease (or asthma). This is in combination with Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia which is just kind of lung disease, caused from his prematurity. Since I've left PICU this evening James has worsened. His IV shot and he had to get a new one placed and his respiratory status got worse. James was working much harder to breath and was placed on something called vapotherm with gives more support, this failed to help him and now he's on something called Bi-pap. This is similar to something called C-PAP which he was on frequently in NICU when he was a baby. Hopefully this helps because the next step would be intubation and placed on a ventilator. We ask for your prayers at this point and may God give James the strength he needs to get through this.

Busy Busy Busy

Wow have we been a busy family! I can't believe it's been so long since I've updated the blog. Recently Elliot decided he'd like to visit the place where James spends so much time-the hospital! He had an abscess on his bottom that they said was "complex" and couldn't be drained with a needle. He was admitted so that they could make an incision to drain it and st art him on IV meds because they didn't know what kind of bacteria was causing it. Turns out the bacteria were ones that are commonly found in your stool. So he probably had an open skin sopt and stool got in there :P James recently had a bad cold that made him vomit as well and got dehydrated. He ended up needing to go to the clinic for IV fluids and got better soon after he got those. Mom recently spent a weekend away from home with friends for a weekend of scrapbooking! I got tons done! I did about 26 pages for my brother Adam's scrapbook and got 21 pages done for James' scrapbook. In October I'll be spending a weekend with my mom, her sisters and some of my cousins scrapbooking and I'm hoping to start on Elliot's book then. Dad stays busy taking care of the yard and doing small home improvements. He recently made me shelf for our shoes in the kitchen closet and I love it!