+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Esophagus news
As we said previously, they did the barium swallow to see what Alex's esophagus looks like when we were at the hospital on Tuesday. Unfortunately, they did find that it was pretty tight, and want to do a dilation on him. Hindsight being 20/20, it would have been nice to have had it done at the same time as the g-tube closure (a.k.a gastrocutaneous fistula takedown, in case anyone was curious), but the doc understandably didn't want to go in blind and break something that didn't need to be fixed. That being said, Alex's surgeon is leaving Albany for greener pastures at the end of the month, complicating the scheduling. It looks like he'll squeeze us in on May 22nd, which is good. We don't want to break in another surgeon in the middle of all of this.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Home safe and sound
We got home this afternoon, with no major problems other than some delays in getting checked out of the hospital due to paperwork. Alex came home, ate a big lunch, and promptly took a 3 1/2 hour nap. He's pretty much back to normal, chasing the cats around and tossing big things down his slide. We're told that he is supposed to lay off of heavy lifting for a month, and lay off strenuous exercise, but, how do you tell a 20 month old not to run around? I'm thinking that we won't be adhering to that advise too closely.
Oh, and he's up to 23 pounds, a 2 pound gain in the last couple of months, placing him in the 10th percentile! Go Alex!
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Another Update
Alex has been sleeping or groggily watching TV for most of the afternoon. He'll be staying the night at the hospital for observation, and Kari is with him right now. They only allow one parent in for the night, so I'm home for the evening.
We've been a little concerned that Alex might need another esophageal dilation (where the two halves of his esophagus were connected, scar tissue has grown, and occasionally constricts flow, and needs to be stretched out), and were hoping that we could do that while he was out under anesthesia today, but that didn't happen. In order to do the dilation, they want to do a Barium swallow study, where they look with an X-ray to see whether or not he would need the dilation. So, we are going to do that tomorrow morning, as long as they can fit us into the schedule in a reasonable time-frame.
+ 0 - 0 | § ¶Things went well.
Alex had his surgery today, and things went pretty well. They removed his g-tube scar tissue, and closed everything up so that it should heal into a half-inch linear scar. Alex is understandably a little upset this everning. They don't want him to eat or drink anything until tomorrow because they did open up his stomach and they want it to heal a bit. I think between that, and the fact that he's probably in pain, means that he's a little cranky. Hopefully, he'll sleep well, and tomorrow will be a new day.