Tuesday Night Update

I have a few minutes to type while Tom is sitting with Samuel....

This is day #6 in the hospital, day #5 in the ICU. Samuel is doing a little better each day. His new kidney is making urine and doing an okay (not great) job of cleaning his blood. His creatinine is climbing (not a good thing), but at least it is not skyrocketing. Samuel was able to skip his regularly scheduled dialysis session on Monday and again today (picture me jumping up and down with joy!). He will probably be dialyzed tomorrow. There is concrete evidence that the kidney is healing and the expectation is that it will, with time, improve in function. For now, it may need a little assistance in the form of dialysis.

For the last few days, the doctors have been concerned about several issues with Samuel:

1. He was "too wet" and had excess fluid around his lungs. Slowly, but surely, the fluid has been pulled back into his vascular system and is being excreted. This is no longer a concern. Praise God!

2. Samuel has a nasogastric tube that goes up his nose, down his throat, and into his stomach. His intestines are not working and the tube drains out bile that collects in his stomach. You can imagine that Samuel does not like this tube. His throat is very sore, it hurts to talk, and it is difficult to understand what he is saying. The NG tube has been in place this long because Samuel's stomach has been bleeding. The doctors are treating him with a proton pump inhibitor drug to reduce the production of gastric acid. This seems to be working as today he had very little drainage. Thank you, Lord!

3. The doctors are continuing to treat Samuel's clot with an IV drip of heparin. This made for an exciting time today when his arterial line was removed. Because Samuel's blood is very thin, it took a stack of gauze pads and a bit of time for the bleeding to stop. We are playing a waiting game with the clot. If the new kidney were working well enough that Samuel no longer needed dialysis, they would remove the catheter that has the clot attached to it and that would be the end of it. Because he is not quite ready to give up his dialysis catheter, they will likely send him home from the hospital on an anti-coagulant medication like coumadin. Lord willing, this will keep the clot from growing and completely blocking the blood flow through the vein.

Samuel's accomplishments for today include walking in the hall twice and sitting in a recliner chair. Other than that, he spent the day sleeping. It seemed more like an exhausted-body-trying-to-heal type of sleep rather than a drug-induced-stupor type of sleep.....hard to explain, but I found it encouraging.

Tomorrow's plans include having the nasogastric tube removed and probably moving from the ICU up to the pediatric floor. After so many baby steps, these will be some exciting milestones.

Please pray for Samuel as his frustration level is very high. He is in a lot of pain and it is difficult for him to communicate. At the moment, it is hard for him see past the pain and disappointment. There are good things happening. Please rejoice with us!