Wednesday, June 18, 2008

DCH


Where do I even start to blog about the last week? We went into Portland on Thursday for Clayton's pediatric dermatologist visit and then by very strong urging of the doctor had him admitted to Doernbecher Children's Hospital, where we were until late Monday afternoon. Clayton was admitted for malnutrition and eczema. At first I was feeling really condemned by Dr. Krol (the ped. derm.) even though it was a relief to finally have someone else as concerned about Clayton but I got to thinking...Dr. Krol didn't know us from anyone and we came in with a little baby boy that had lost 5 pounds in the last month-month and a half and was very edemic and showed signs of protein loss...I bet in his business sometimes it's hard to give parents the benefit of the doubt.
The plan right now is to get nutrition into Clayton and take care of any flare-up of rash with the steroid ointments, then once he's a healthy weight again we can try and determine what is causing his rash, but we are just sticking to formula right now to get the calories he needs and when his feeding tube comes out we'll start introducing food again. I think we were so afraid of causing his rash to flare-up that we were afraid to feed him some foods and he wasn't getting enough protein from the formula we were making because we had to take so many ingredients out.
We met with so many people I don't even remember all their names, seems everyone has a specialty and you have to meet them all. But we made it through, Erik did not go stir crazy at the hospital because World Cup Soccer was on most of the time and we also got the history channel and watched a lot on WW2.
Clayton is doing better, he has a feeding tube down his nose but he is doing better.
The feeding tube will stay in until we can get him to drink all that he needs through his bottle. It really does my heart good to see Clayton laughing and smiling again, the last few weeks he has been really listless and grumpy.
It is so nice to be home.

4 comments:

Harkins said...

So glad you are home. I have been thinking of you sooo much. I had a dream about you guys one night and really felt I should be praying for you and then I heard you had checked him into the hospital. Hope you can all get a little rest at home now:) Love you and will keep praying!

Mama Griffith, said...

wow I havent seen clayton smile that big ever!!! I am glad you are giving the docs benifit of the doubt, I know some of the storys greg tells me about pediatric calls are a bit horrifying and have given me a more rounded view of emergency rooms and hospitles, So glad you are home! let me know if you will be comming to camp, its probubly impossible this year but I can still have a small hope.
Again, I am so happy to see clayton look so normal and energetic!!! still praying.

Macaroo42 said...

Yea! So glad you're home! And Rolana's right, I've never seen him look so happy! What a grin. And it looks as if he's suddenly sprouted red hair-- what's with that?! Love to you all. And blessings on the little boy's head. Kiss him for me!

Megan said...

You are in our prayers!!! Even DJ has been saying a prayer for Clayton before he goes to bed.