Eric is doing great today. He didn't have any major spells of fever or high heart rate. He was pretty sleepy most the day. I think he is finally comfortable enough to get some good sleep.
His belly, which has been swollen for most of his life, was a little smaller today. This caused his gastric feeding tube (G-tube) to start leaking out and soaking his clothes. The G-tube is sorta like an IV directly into your stomach. It goes in just below your rib cage and can be used to feed you. Since Eric hasn't been eating, his has been used to drain his stomach juices so they won't all go down and aggravate his intestines. The G-tube is held in by a balloon inside your stomach. Since Eric's stomach swelling went down, the balloon wasn't up against his stomach wall. They just squirted some water into the balloon and the leaking stopped.
Eric is still on oxygen, but very little. He is getting about 1/4 liter per minute via a nasal cannula. He was getting 3 liters a minute just a few days days ago. The have tried to turn it off completely and he does fine except when he is deeply sleeping. He start to fuss and has an oxygen saturation monitor that alarms when it drops. It might take a few more days to get him completely off, but he is doing great considering he was on a ventilator that did all his breathing for him just a week ago.
Next is a test to see how many of the white blood cells were made from the donor marrow. We hope they all are, but there is a chance that some of Eric's bone marrow survived and started making cells again. We found out the donor stem cells came from the cord blood of a baby girl. This means they can look at the chromosomes of Eric's white blood cells and see if the are XX or XY and tell if they came from Eric's marrow or the donor's.
-dk
1 comment:
I'm so excited he is going in the right direction!! I know there is still a long road, but I'm so happy for all of you! I'm still praying and I'm still thinking about all of you! :) Love Cousin Katie
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